


Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

by huffleluff



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Allison Argent/Cora Hale - Freeform, Allison Argent/Scott McCall - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Biphobia, Coming Out, F/F, Forced Out of the Closet, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore - Freeform, Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura - Freeform, Underage Drinking, derek hale/stiles stilinski - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huffleluff/pseuds/huffleluff
Summary: If you had asked Allison Argent if she was straight two months ago, she would have said yes. Now, she isn't so sure.On her eighteen birthday, she receives the name of her soul mate via a mark on her wrist: seventeen year old Lydia Martin. Her sense of identity suddenly gone, Allison must deal with her feelings for her best friend, her preacher father's homophobia, and learning to love herself for who she truly is--preferably before Lydia's eighteenth birthday in just one year's time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so i have been working on this on-and-off for the past year and suddenly got the motivation to finish it this week. it's been 5-6 years since i've written anything, and i've never written anything this long, so apologies if it sucks.
> 
> i wanted to write something that kind of touches on the issues that a lot of lgbtq teens have to deal with. as such, there is a lot of kind of heavy stuff going on in this fic, including: the f slur, people being forcibly outed, getting kicked out of their home, and lots of internalized biphobia & homophobia. note that for the purpose of this fic, i use the definition of bisexuality most commonly used by bi organizations & bi activists (bisexuality is the attraction to people of multiple (2+) genders) rather than the binary definition often used outside of bi circles.

**March**

The first thing Allison feels when she wakes up is dread. The second is searing pain. It is just past four in the morning. She lies rigidly still as the sensation of white-hot needles dances over her left wrist.

Her memories of her mother are hazy. She died when Allison was young, and Allison has played what she remembers over and over in her mind, until the memories are as soft and frayed as well-worn jeans. But when she wakes, Allison thinks of her mother brushing a stray lock of dark hair out of Allison’s face and saying, “It took thirty-six hours of labor to bring you into this world. I always knew you would be trouble.” Her voice is light and teasing. It had been an often-repeated refrain, said when Allison got poison ivy, when she brought a stray puppy home from the bus stop, when she had punched a boy in the first grade for making fun of her.

Now, exactly eighteen years after her mother’s ordeal, as the name of Allison’s soul mate sears itself onto her wrist, those words seem like an ill omen.

It is a testament to her willpower and the human capacity for denial that she does not look at her wrist for the next two hours. For a while, she lays in bed, trying to go back to sleep, but the air in her room is hot and still. Eventually she gets up and dresses herself in the dark, pulling on an oversized sweater and tugging the too-long sleeves down over her hands. She creeps downstairs, walking along the edge of the sagging steps to avoid making them creak. In the kitchen, she pours herself a bowel of frosted flakes and picks through the cereal until it is soggy before throwing it out. She takes out her geometry textbook and makes a show of reviewing for the quiz she has later that day.

When her dad comes downstairs at six, he looks briefly over at her before going into the kitchen to make coffee. His eyes are red-rimmed and his skin seems sallower than usual. Allison thinks that he looks like he got less sleep than her.

By the time that she has to brush her teeth and gather her things for school, Allison has almost convinced herself that the pain and the feeling of certainty that had accompanied it—that sensation of things-that-would-change—had been a dream. The soul bond isn’t a universal phenomenon. It used to be quite common—historians estimate that around eighty percent of the population had a soul bond in the years following the Black Death, for instance—but now, the number is lower, something like thirty percent. There are evolutionary biologists that say the decrease is a response to the rapidly expanding global population, an evolutionary precaution against overpopulation.

Allison isn’t convinced. It isn’t like soul mates are the only people having babies. In fact, soul mates aren’t always having them, either—a lot of people don’t have romantic or sexual feelings about their soul mate. Sometimes the bond is one-sided. Sometimes bonded couples make better friends than lovers.

It is this last thought that comforts Allison enough that she is able to take a deep breath, push up her sleeve, and look at the name that is scrawled beneath it.

For a moment, looking at the familiar loops of the L and the Y, the tiny, neat curves of the cursive, all she feels is a strong sense of contentment. Then her stomach drops.

Allison lets her sleeve down again, hastily covering the source of her shame. Her face feels hot, and for a second she thinks that she might throw up what little breakfast she had eaten, but the sensation passes. When her dad calls her name, she slowly picks up her backpack and meets him outside, climbing into the front seat of their old Ford. He watches her closely as she concentrates on buckling her seatbelt, on nestling her backpack securely between her feet. She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn’t look back at him.

“You know, most people don’t get it,” he says. His voice is soft, placating. “It’s not that common. It doesn’t mean anything for you and Scott.

Scott. Allison stiffens. She hadn’t even thought of Scott. They have been dating for nine months. He is soft-spoken and sweet and eight months younger than her. She shudders at the thought of sharing this new and scary part of herself with him. Her dad thinks that she is upset because she hadn’t gotten a soul bond, when in reality—

“He could still get one,” Allison says. “His birthday isn’t until November.” It is easier to let her dad think that this is what she’s upset about.

“Like I said, most people don’t get them,” her dad says. “And that’s eight months away. A lot can happen in eight months.”

He’s right, of course. Allison wishes that this was all she had to deal with. She fishes her cell phone out of the front pocket of her book bag and types: _we need to talk._

There’s nothing like a soul bond to seriously screw up the natural process of finding yourself and figuring out your identity. The statistics say that gay teens who have soul bonds are nearly three times as likely to suffer from persistent anxiety and depression.

Allison leans against the brick wall of the high school, her arms crossed over her chest, her hands tucked into her armpits as a defense against the cold, against an accidental slip of her wrist. The early March breeze is chilly against her face, and the wetness from the grass seeps into her tennis shoes and the hem of her jeans.

“Hey, Allison.” The sound of Scott’s voice startles her. She realizes she has been completely zoned out, her eyes fixed on the cloudy sky. Scott sounds cheerful, mostly, but he doesn’t lean in to kiss her like he normally would. She can tell he is worried.

“Hey, Scott,” she echoes, a second too late. She realizes she has been completely zoned out, her eyes fixed on the cloudy sky.

They stand in silence for a long moment. The space between them feels oppressive. Allison struggles to breathe in, and thinks about the name written on her wrist. She forces herself to uncross her arms, to look less defensive. Instead, she leans back harder into the wall and lets her arms hang down by her sides, pressing her palms against the brick behind her. It’s cold and rough and feels more real than anything else has that morning. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know if there is anything she _can_ say.

A lot of soul bonds are platonic. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

It had _felt_ like it meant something.

For a dizzying second, remembering the way her heart had leapt that morning when she looked at the name, she thinks she is going to black out, but the moment passes.

Scott is the one who finally breaks the silence. “You got one, didn’t you.” His voice is gentle, not accusatory, but it isn’t a question.

Allison answers anyways. “Yeah.”

“And it’s not—not us,” he says.

“No,” she replies, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Allison.” Scott reaches out to her. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s alright if you don’t want to—I mean, since you got the—it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

Allison laughs, sort of, but it’s mostly just one quick exhale. She knows Scott can tell she doesn’t believe him, but she leans forward, allowing him to fold her into his arms.

She doesn’t have to do this. She might have a platonic bond. It might not be reciprocated. She has time before she needs to worry about this. She can do her best to ignore that this morning had ever happened, at least for a little while.

She thinks about the way she felt, looking at that name. She won’t be able to tell Scott who it is, not before she has her feelings sorted out. Not before she’s figured out exactly what it is she feels for her soul mate, before she knows if it is reciprocated. Not before she knows if she is—

She thinks about dating Scott, about hiding this from him, about months spent growing apart. Months where Scott watches her when he thinks she isn’t looking and wonders what—who—she is hiding.

The warm and fluttery feelings she has for Scott seem less real today, in light of her soul bond, than they had the day before. Because the nature of this, this fleeting high school romance is lesser than that of a soul bond? Or because she isn’t into to guys?

Allison doesn’t know. She wishes she had more time to figure this out.

“I’m sorry, Scott,” she says, her voice muffled by his coat. She lets herself soak in his warmth for a second longer, then pulls away. It feels like stepping off a bridge without looking to see what lies below. She leaves him standing there as she half-jogs into the school building.

~*~

The first time she sees Lydia after receiving the bond is fifteen minutes into first period, in the girls’ bathroom on the A wing of the building. She hadn’t planned out her strategy well enough before hand, Allison realizes. If she had been thinking about it, she would have waited to break up with Scott until after school, when she could have gone home afterwards and barricaded herself in her bedroom, far from the prying eyes of nosy best friends.

“Allison,” Lydia says as she walks into the bathroom. “You’re missing the geometry quiz.” She knocks insistently on the door of the stall Allison has locked herself in.

“If I’m missing the geometry quiz, doesn’t that mean you’re also missing the geometry quiz?” Allison asks. Though she aims for bravado, her voice cracks. “Not going to let a little thing like friendship stand in the way of getting into MIT, are you?”

“I’m already done,” Lydia replies, exaggeratedly patient. “Now, are you going to come out or not? I _will_ reconsider our friendship if you make me crawl under the door on this disgusting floor to drag you out.”

Allison grabs some toilet paper and blows her nose, stalling for time. When Lydia begins to tap her foot, she caves and opens the door. Lydia is leaning against the stall. She’s beautiful, Allison thinks, the kind of girl everyone wants to be. Allison feels warm just looking at her.

“I’m not really in the mood for math,” she tells Lydia. Lydia’s face softens immediately, responding to something she sees in Allison’s face. Allison hadn’t been crying, but her skin feels hot and stretched and her eyes burn.

“What happened?” Lydia asks, pulling Allison into a hug,

Allison reaches up to hug her back. Her hands brush against Lydia’s hair. It feels like silk against her skin, chapped by the cold. “I broke up with Scott,” she says, because Lydia would know by lunch anyways.

She sort of hopes that Lydia has forgotten was day it is, but she knows it isn’t possible. Even if she was the sort of person who forgot birthdays—which she isn’t—Lydia and Allison share a birthday. They were born exactly twelve months apart.

Allison thinks of her first day at Beacon Hills High School three and a half before. She was sitting in homeroom next to Lydia, who had already appointed herself as the head of the welcoming committee for Allison. Their teacher was making a birthday calendar for their class. Allison had been astonished and secretly pleased to find that she shared a birthday with the gorgeous girl who seemed intent on becoming her new best friend. It didn’t surprise Lydia.

“There’s like a seventy percent chance that two people will share a birthday in a class of thirty people,” she told Allison, and smiled. Allison blinked—she had never heard someone come up with a statistic that fast—before smiling back.

A coalition of her father and the Beacon Hills guidance counseling office had insisted on Allison repeating her freshman year year. Allison and her father had moved four times the year before, and her grades had been atrocious. Allison knows that her dad had only wanted what was best for her—it’s why he decided to settle down in Beacon Hills until she graduated high school, after years spent as a traveling evangelist and missionary. She still didn’t speak to him for two weeks after the meeting with her guidance counselor. Freshman year had been bad enough the first time around. But becoming friends with Lydia almost made it worth it.

Now their friendship, and their shared birthday, seems like a giant cosmic joke. Allison has a year to wait, a year before she will know if the soul bond is reciprocated. It seems like both too much and too little time.

After a minute of holding Allison, Lydia steps back and glances surreptitiously at Allison’s wrist. Allison automatically covers it with her right hand, though the name is still hidden by the sweater.

“You said you’d be fine if you didn’t get a name,” Lydia says. She digs through her purse until she finds a tiny pack of tissues and hands them to Allison. Allison balls them in her fist. “I thought—did you get someone else?”

Allison looks away. “Yeah,” she says. Her voice is watery.

“I’m assuming you don’t want to tell me who it is right now,” Lydia says. “That’s okay. Just know that I’m here if you want to talk.” She reaches out and rubs Allison’s shoulder reassuringly.

“Thanks,” Allison says.

The thing about having Lydia for a best friend is that it is almost impossible to hide anything. Allison read somewhere that criminal profiling like they do in television shows isn’t practical in the real world—profiles are either completely wrong or too vague to be helpful—but she thinks Lydia could probably make it work. Lydia seems to know everything. Allison wishes that her hands would stop shaking, and prays that Lydia can’t read the truth on her face.

If Lydia knows, she doesn’t hint at it, “Come on,” she says. “You need to take this quiz, and I need to not get in trouble for cutting class. I’ll switch you seats so you don’t have to sit by Scott.” Lydia carefully pushes Allison’s hair out of her face and tugs on the hem of her sweater until it hangs straight. It is a familiar gesture after three and a half years of friendship. Allison can’t remember when it started to make her feel like her heart had lodged in her throat.

I can do this, she tells herself, and takes a deep breath. Lydia doesn’t know. She doesn’t _need_ to know. She might _never_ know. She might end up with Allison’s name on her wrist three hundred and sixty-five days from now, but it isn’t a sure thing. I can do this, Allison thinks again, and if a voice in the back of her head says it feels like a lie, she ignores it.

Four hours down, roughly eight thousand to go.

**April**

In the weeks following her birthday and her breakup with Scott, Allison often wonders if some sort of psychic network connects the entire population of Beacon Hills High. Scott’s relationship with her had provided him a little notoriety by virtue of his being only degrees of separation from Jackson, Lydia, and their crowd. His popularity had been cemented earlier that year when he made first line for the varsity lacrosse team. He and Jackson are two of only three only juniors starting. She guesses that the fame is the reason why the news of their breakup had spread like wildfire.

Though Scott and Stiles still sit at their lunch table, Scott is careful to sit on the other side of the long table. He avoids making eye contact with Allison for several weeks. She is grateful. Their breakup had hurt, even if it was inevitable. She still doesn’t know what to say to him. She’s too confused, and her thoughts circle around like a dog chasing its tail until she is dizzy with them. What she had with Scott had felt _real_. Maybe not like a soul bond, but definitely something more than friendship. It had felt like love, or at least adoration. If you had asked her two months ago if she was straight, she wouldn’t have hesitated to say yes.

She tells herself again and again that the soul bond with Lydia could be platonic, that she isn’t gay, that she is just having a very understandable reaction to finding out that she has a soul bond. Though she tries, she can’t remember how she felt about Lydia before. It hadn’t been so—so tender, so sweet, had it?

It takes her classmates a little longer to notice the series of long-sleeved shirts she wears, but it becomes increasingly obvious as the weather gets warmer.

By mid-April, it seems to be common knowledge that Allison Argent has a soul bond, though neither Lydia nor Scott have told anyone. Well, Scott probably told Stiles, but Scott tells Stiles everything, so that doesn’t really count. It’s not uncommon for people to cover the name of their soul mate if the soul mate hasn’t turned eighteen yet, so they could wait to see if it would be reciprocated. Sometimes people will cover it if their soul mate is already eighteen, and they know it isn’t reciprocated. A few people suggest that she is covering it up because she is embarrassed, but no one guesses the truth, at least not within her hearing.

One day in biology, Lydia throws herself into the seat next to Allison with an irritated sigh. Her foot slides across Allison’s ankle under the lab table. Allison keeps her face carefully straight. “Some jackass just asked me if you bonded with Danny,” Lydia says crossly.

It takes Allison a second to register what Lydia had said. “What?”

“Yeah, the popular opinion is that you have an unreciprocated soul bond with Danny, and you’re hiding it because he’s gay.” Lydia pulls her day planner out of her backpack, sets it down hard on the table, and begins to copy the assignment off of the whiteboard.

“Actually, it’s Jackson,” Allison jokes as she begins to do the same. “I didn’t want you to find out this way, but I’ve been harboring a secret and passionate love for your boyfriend since freshman year.”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “It’s just dumb,” she says. “Soul bonds between people whose gender and sexuality aren’t compatible happen all the time. They’re just platonic. And you wouldn’t hide a platonic soul bond.”

Allison, staring at her planner, tenses up and waits for Lydia to ask what she _is_ hiding. After a few seconds of silence, she glances over to see that Lydia is still writing intensely, with no apparent plans on prying. The words replay in her head—sometimes, soul mates aren’t compatible. Sometimes, maybe-not-straight girls fall in love with their straight best friends.

She still doesn’t know what this is.

~*~

Allison doesn’t know why she had let Lydia talk her into taking AP biology, except for the fact that it is hard to say no to Lydia when she wants something. The AP exam is just over two weeks away, and she’s barely scraping a B minus in the class. Her dad thought taking it was a good idea, but then again, he wants Allison to go to college and become a doctor or a marriage counselor or something. Allison still isn’t sure what she wants to do. She likes being on the archery team, but it doesn’t seem like something you could make a career out of. It is hard for her to imagine life after high school. The year before graduation seem like a lifetime.

“Nothing wrong with keeping your options open,” she mutters, mimicking the chirpy voice Lydia uses whenever she wants to talk Allison into doing something. She sticks her highlighter in her mouth and turns the page of her review book. Damn Lydia and her genius-level IQ.

Allison’s phone chirps, the text message alert that she set for Lydia. Her less-than-charitable thoughts about her best friend don’t keep her from immediately grabbing her phone, shoving the review book off her bed, and rolling over onto her back to read the text: _The pool is officially open! Come over, you seriously need to work on your tan_

It isn’t really warm enough to lie out, but Allison doesn’t need much of an excuse to take a study break. She digs out a bag and shoves her swimsuit and towel into it. The next step is to stare into her closet, biting her lower lip as she looks at rows of sweatshirts and long-sleeved shirts. In the end, she fishes out a thin white hoodie that zips out in the front, the fabric barely thicker than a tee shirt. Hopefully it’s cool enough outside that she won’t have a heatstroke.

Her provisions gathered, Allison goes downstairs to poke her head into the dining room. Her dad sits at the table, his Bible and a notebook open in front of him. “Working on a sermon?” she asks.

“Just going over everything again before tomorrow,” her dad says, smiling at her. “Do you want to read it?”

Allison smiles, trying not to look as tense as she feels. And why? She used to read all of her dad’s sermons. “Actually, I told Lydia I’d come over,” she says. “Her parents have got the pool set up for the summer. Can I borrow the car?”

“The pool, huh?” her dad says, eying Allison’s outfit. She is wearing an olive green cardigan over her tank top. Allison fights the urge to tuck her arm behind her back. “Are you going to wear your sweater to go swimming?”

Allison rolls her eyes, faking exasperation. “We’re not _swimming_ , Dad. The water will be too cold. We’re just sunning.” Her heart beats a little faster.

Her dad sighs. “Look, Allison I know that things have been rough, but you know you can tell me anything, right?”

She wonders what he thinks is going on. Not the truth, obviously, since he hasn’t pulled her out of Beacon Hills High, started homeschooling her, and forbade her from ever seeing any of her friends again. She remembers a sermon on soul bonds he had given a year or so before they moved to Beacon Hills. “The soul bond was never meant to be platonic,” he’d told her as he worked on the sermon. “It’s a corruption, a sign of the increasing instability of the family. No relationship should be more important than that of parent and child, husband and wife.”

Even further back, she remembers her mother muttering under her breath. “Fags,” she’d hissed, reaching up a hand to cover Allison’s eyes. Her skin was cool on Allison’s face as she attempted to shield her five-year-old daughter’s eyes from the sight of two men holding hands as they walked down the street. Allison couldn’t remember their faces, but she remembered how tightly they both seemed to grasp the other’s hand.

“I know, Dad,” she says. She sounds like any other teen girl exasperated with an overprotective father. Her chest aches.

“Alright. You can take the car. Don’t stay out too late.” He looks at her a second longer, then returns to his work.

Allison scoops the keys off of the counter and flees.

~*~

Lydia’s eyes linger on Allison’s hoodie when she comes out of the bathroom. She wishes that she’d stayed in her shorts and tank top. The hoodie looks weird over the frilled bikini top.

“You’re never going to get a tan that way,” Lydia tells her.

“You never tan, period, Little Miss Ginger,” Allison points out, and with that, Lydia seems happy to let the subject drop. Allison is grateful.

They make a quick detour to the kitchen on the way to the pool. Allison watches, smiling slightly as Lydia digs around in the silverware drawer until she produces a key. “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, Lydia.”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “I’m well aware, Allison,” she says as she ducks into the pantry. If you could call it a pantry. Allison has had bedrooms that were smaller. “But what’s the point of laying out if you don’t have pina coladas? Besides, we’re only going to have one or two.” She comes out a second later, brandishing a fifth of Malibu victoriously in one hand. Ten minutes later, both girls pad out onto the patio, frozen drinks in hand.

Allison collapses onto an Adirondack chair by the pool and takes a sip of her drink. “This is good,” she admits, and turns her face upwards. The sun feels good on her exposed chest and stomach. She wishes she could take off her hoodie.

“Don’t tell me you doubted my skills with a blender, Argent,” Lydia replies. She’s grabbed a fancy pool float that looks like an oversized armchair and sets it gently into the pool. The float was big enough to fit three people. Lydia carefully moves onto it, drink in hand.

“Isn’t it a little cold for that?” Allison asks, watching Lydia through cracked eyelids.

“I’m not getting into the water,” Lydia says. “Besides, what’s the use of having a pool if you don’t float in it?”

Allison makes a noise of assent and sips her drink. She loves seeing Lydia in the warm weather. Her best friend is happily reclined on the float, her drink safely resting in a cup holder. Her long, soft hair is tied in an artful looking knot on the top of her head. She is wearing oversized sunglasses and a white swimsuit. The swimsuit is one piece, but the neckline plunges low enough that Allison can see her navel. Somehow on Lydia it looks classy. Allison thinks she is the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen.

The warmth from the sun and the pina colada makes her feel sleepy. Allison rolls onto her stomach, lifting her loose hair up off the back of her neck. It seems like she’s just drifted off to sleep when she feels something cold and wet dripping onto one of her calves.

“Ugh!” she shrieks, jerking awake and looking over her shoulder. Lydia stands there, a bottle of sunscreen in one hand, looking smug.

“Come on,” Lydia says. “I need help reaching my back. I’m already burning. And _you_ need to rub that in, unless you want some weird sweatshirt tan lines.”

Grumbling, Allison does as she is told, first smearing sunscreen on her own exposed skin, then over Lydia’s back. As her hands glide over Lydia’s shoulders, Allison shivers. Lydia smells like flowers and fruity mixed drinks. Her skin is soft and smooth. The white bathing suit is almost completely backless; Allison pours more sunscreen into one palm and drags it over the soft curve of Lydia’s waist.

Lydia giggles. “That _tickles_ ,” she protests, shoving Allison’s hand away.

“Well, don’t blame me when you get skin cancer,” Allison replies, allowing her arm to drop. She takes a step back, though she doesn’t want to. Lydia’s nearness is intoxicating. Suddenly, she is disgusted with herself. How could she touch Lydia like that when Lydia doesn’t know—

Allison feels like a pervert. “Go back to your float,” she tells Lydia and tries to smile.

~*~

That evening, before Allison goes home, Lydia drags her into her bedroom, then begins rifling through her closet. “It’s warm outside,” she tells Allison. “You can’t keep wearing sweaters forever.”

Allison’s palms are sweaty. “Lydia—”

“No, I understand, you’re not ready to tell the world yet, or whatever.” Lydia emerges from the closet, a fistful of jewelry in each hand. “Here,” she says and thrusts them at Allison.

It is a collection of bracelets, each an inch or two wide. Some are gold or silver; others have panels of colored stones embedded in them. Allison stares at them, wide-eyed. “Lydia, I can’t take these.”

“Don’t be stupid. You can return them to me when—” _when you’re ready to stop hiding things from me_ , her eyes seem to say. “In the fall. You can return them to me in the fall. Two or three should be wide enough to—to cover it.”

Allison clutches the bracelets to her chest. “Thanks, Lydia. For everything.”

Lydia sniffs delicately. “I just don’t want my best friend to die of heat stroke.”

~*~

**May**

By the time Lydia sits down on the bleachers next to her, Allison is regretting her decision to wear black. She tugs futilely at the hem of her shorts, trying to pull them down so that her thighs won’t stick so badly to the sun-warmed bleachers when she moves. The bandage on her left wrist covering the mark chafes, but it’s better than nothing. With the bracelets over the bandage, it feels a little less like everyone is staring at her arm. She hates that she had been held back a year. If she wasn’t the first person in her class to receive a mark, people would be less interested.

“Water?” Lydia asks, coming up behind her. She holds out a bottle to Allison.

Allison takes the water bottle. Her fingers brush against Lydia’s, cold and wet from the condensation that coats the plastic. Her fingernails are painted dark red. “Thanks,” Allison says.

Lydia, of course, doesn’t look like the unseasonably hot weather inconveniences her at all. Her pale blue sundress flutters around her thighs when the breeze gives a halfhearted blow. Allison concentrates on not looking at the pale, perfect skin beneath the dress, and shivers in the heat.

The bleachers fill up quickly after that. Lacrosse is always popular, and this is the championship game. The presence of other people makes the heat almost unbearable. Allison has finished the bottle of water by the time the game starts. Soon, everyone is on their feet, cheering and clapping as the players file onto the field. When Jackson passes by the bleachers at a slow jog, he blows Lydia a kiss. Allison looks pointedly at her feet, but can see Lydia wave back out of the corner of her eye.

“He’s such a showoff,” she says to Allison, but her voice is affectionate. Allison makes an absent-minded noise of agreement, letting her eyes roam over the players until—

“Is that her?” Allison whispers to Lydia. It’s a stupid question. Kira Yukimura is the only girl on the team. Unless Greenberg has recently gotten long, black hair extensions, this had to be her. The new girl, the one she keeps overhearing Scott talk about. She doesn’t have any classes with Allison.

“That’s her,” Lydia says, considerably less interested in the new girl than Allison is. “Do you see that Palm County player over there? He looks like he’s on steroids.”

Allison thinks that is a somewhat unfair statement, considering Jackson also looks like he’s on steroids, but she keeps that thought to herself. She has long since accepted that the dynamics of Lydia and Jackson’s relationship are too complicated for mere mortals to understand. Most of the time, Lydia treats Jackson like a cross between a prized pet and a designer handbag. He is a tool to secure her place at the top of the high school food chain, someone to shower her with affection when she wants it. 

She thinks that maybe Lydia is just attracted to Jackson’s athleticism.

She wonders if she should try out for the girls’ tennis team next year.

It is a long game, and a close one, but Beacon Hills manages to pull through and win the championship. Allison watches the game with only a little less intensity than Lydia. Kira plays surprisingly well considering she tripped and fell flat on her face twice during the warm-up. Allison is half-afraid that she’ll end up tangled in the lacrosse stick, but Kira is apparently much more graceful with one in hand. Scott gets a decent amount of playtime as well, though Stiles is, as usual, stuck on the bench.

“You’re still coming to the victory party, right?” Lydia asks as they file out of the stands.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Allison asks, surprised.

Lydia shrugs. “Oh, just with everyone being there,” she says, keeping her voice casual.

“I’m not jealous of Kira,” Allison says. And she’s not, not really. She misses what she had with Scott. Misses him, misses his sweetness, misses the convenience of having someone to go out with and call late at night—but she stands by her decision. Scott is always thinking long-term. She wouldn’t have felt right, dating him, being what she was.

“Okay,” Lydia says, and leaves it at that. “I’ll see you tonight.”

~*~

Allison regrets her decision a little at 3AM, after almost everyone else has left the party and she is left holding Kira’s hair out of her face as she vomits. At least Lydia’s bathroom is unreasonably large, almost the size of Allison’s whole bedroom. It would have been unbearable to listen to the contents of Kira’s stomach splashing against the porcelain if they’d been crammed into the tiny half bath she uses at home.

Scott left early, after Stiles had, quote, “begun to look in danger of passing out in the pool, drowning, and leaving me to deal with the negligent homicide charges,” according to Lydia. Scott confiscated Stiles’s car keys. Allison slung one of his arms around her shoulder. Together, they poured Stiles into the passenger seat of his jeep.

Allison was relieved when Scott left, despite what she’d told Lydia at the game. He had been a little too close, his hand brushing her shoulder as they hauled Stiles out.

Still, it left Kira with no ride home. Lydia had left the girl with Allison and disappeared into her room. She reappears now in the doorway of the bathroom, holding a pair of pajamas, a large glass of water, and some ibuprofen.

“Make sure she drinks the water tonight,” Lydia tells Allison. “The ibuprofen’s for in the morning. My mom’s plane is supposed to be landing at ten tomorrow morning, so try not to look too hungover when she gets home.” The last sentence is directed at Kira.

“Crap,” Kira groans.

“Like your mother doesn’t know you had the entire school body over tonight to raid her liquor cabinet anyways,” Allison says.

Lydia smiles tightly at her. “Well, we like to try and maintain the illusion of a functional mother-daughter relationship,” she replies. “I made up the bed in the guest bedroom, and left out extra blankets so one of you can take the couch.”

“Thanks,” Allison says.

“It’s no problem. I’m about to go take Jackson home, but first—” Lydia produces a brightly colored plastic toothbrush wrapped in plastic from under the bathroom sink. It looks like the sort of thing you get from the dentist. “Brush your teeth after you’re done throwing up,” she tells Kira. “Stomach acid is bad for your enamel.”

“Thanks,” Kira mutters.

Lydia leaves the bathroom. A few minutes after that, Kira flushes the toilet and gets shakily to her feet. “I’m good,” she tells Allison, her words slurring slightly. “I’m not that drunk. You can go to bed.”

“Are you sure?” Allison asks skeptically.

“Yeah,” Kira says. “I mean, I’m drunk, but I only threw up because I drank that last beer too fast.”

“Too much carbonation will do that to you,” Allison says, looking Kira over. Kira looks shaky, but she is standing on her own. Allison murmurs a goodnight and heads to the guest bedroom. The hallway spins a little as she walks.

Her duffle bag is lying on top of the bed. She grabs her pajamas and her toiletry bag and ducks into the guest bathroom. Afterwards, she crawls into bed gratefully. Lying on her back, looking at the ceiling, though, she doesn’t feel nearly tired enough to fall asleep. The room tilts dizzyingly with the effect of alcohol.

Next to her, the bed dips under a new person’s weight. She turns her head and sees Kira, dressed in a pair of Lydia’s pajamas. The word PINK is spelled out in sparkly letters across her breasts. Kira pulls the covers over her shoulders.

“Lydia left blankets for you on the couch,” Allison protests sleepily.

“It’s wet. I think someone spilled something on it,” Kira whispers.

Allison groans. “Lydia’s mom will be pissed.”

They are quiet for a few minutes, and tiredness begins to settle over Allison. She is just beginning to think that she might be able to go to sleep when Kira says, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Allison asks.

“I know you and Scott—”

“It’s fine,” Allison interrupts.

“But—”

“It’s fine. Really,” Allison insists. “Scott’s a good guy. He deserves—you know.” Someone he has a future with. Someone who isn’t…whatever she is.

“Okay,” Kira says softly.

It seems like a long time before Allison is able to fall asleep.

~*~

Allison hadn’t realized how awkward she and Scott have let things get between them. They haven’t been alone together since the breakup. They still avoid making eye contact at lunch, where Kira now sits opposite of Scott, though he insists they’re not dating. The brief touch Allison and Scott shared at Lydia’s party was the closest thing to a real interaction they’d had since March. All of these things run through Allison’s mind as she stares at Scott, wide-eyed, after literally running into him at the grocery store.

“Sorry,” she says, a beat too late. “I didn’t see you.”

“Yeah, I, uh—I figured,” Scott says, and smiles. It doesn’t seem forced. “My mom just asked me to stop and pick up some milk after I got off work.” He shrugs.

“I needed yogurt,” Allison replies, gesturing towards the grocery basket she’s holding in one hand. They’re both silent for a moment.

“Uh, thanks, by the way,” Scott finally says. “For taking care of Kira last weekend.”

“It was Lydia, really,” Allison says. “And you had to take Stiles home.” She hesitates for a second, then adds. “She seems really nice. Kira, I mean.”

“She really, really is. And she’s funny too. And great at lacrosse!” Scott grins in a familiar, silly way. It’s strange to see him smile like that over another girl, but Allison can’t help but smile back. Really, she’s glad that he’s happy. She suddenly wishes, very badly, that they could be friends again.

“How are your finals looking?” she asks.

Scott winces. “My first one is for English,” he says. “I didn’t really get to start studying until after the lacrosse championship. You know how Finstock gets during the season.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Allison says. They’re silent again.

“So are you coming to Stiles’s party this weekend?” Scott asks. He looks eager to steer the subject away from school. She doesn’t blame him. Scott was smart, but between work and lacrosse and his crush on Kira and this—whatever it is that’s going on between them—she’s surprised his grades are still as good as they are.

Of course, she’s been a little distracted by everything as well, which she promptly demonstrates by asking, “Stiles is throwing a party?”

Scott suddenly looks worried, as if he’s said something he shouldn’t have. “You know. For his—his birthday.”

“Oh.” He’s turning eighteen, Allison realizes.

“Yeah.” Scott shrugs, then smiles thinly. “He’s still saying he’s sure Lydia’s his soul mate.”

Allison tries not to scowl at the thought. “I think I’m busy that night,” she says vaguely.

“Okay,” Scott replies. It suddenly felt awkward again. “Well just—take care, okay? And maybe we can go out sometime, catch up. As a group, I mean,”

He seems like he means it. Allison forces herself to relax. She knows that despite whatever happened between them, Scott wouldn’t have tried to upset her on purpose. Regardless of whatever is going on with her, Scott is a good guy.

“Yeah,” Allison replied. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

**June**

Somehow, Allison manages to make it through finals week without losing her mind or doing horribly in any of her classes. It helps that instead of a final exam in her AP Biology class, she just had to make a children’s book explaining photosynthesis. After the actual AP exam, she would have been happy to never see another science test again.

The last day of classes is a half-day, and Allison goes home immediately after finishing her geometry exam and takes a nap. She’d been up for most of the night before, first studying for the exam and then laying in bed and stressing out about it. She doesn’t wake up until Lydia calls her.

“Do you want to come over and spend the night tonight? Celebrate being done with classes?” Lydia asks, her voice light.

Allison frowns. “I thought you were going to some party with Jackson and the rest of the lacrosse team,” she says. The silence that follows seems long and cold.

“I don’t really feel like going out,” Lydia says shorty. “I already told Jackson I’m not going.”

“Okay,” Allison says, feeling confused. “Um, yeah, I can definitely come over then.”

At Lydia’s house, she listens while her best friend talks about how the geometry test had gone, and her Latin final, and the SAT prep class she’s signed up to take over the summer. Allison is paying attention to Lydia—it’s hard _not_ to pay attention to Lydia—but in the back of her mind, she’s thinking about Jackson-and-Lydia. Allison knows that Lydia’s smarter than she likes to let on—after all, she’s basically dragged Allison through two years of math and science classes by the nape of her neck. She thinks it must be grating, having all these people think that Lydia’s not smart just because she’s beautiful, like she can’t be both.

Allison wonders if it ever gets tiring, pretending to be something you’re not.

Though their conversation is animated, Lydia seems tired in a visceral sort of way that Allison’s not used to. She’s seemed tired since the championship party, now that Allison thinks about it. She still talks to Allison like everything’s normal, but this isn’t the first time this week that she’s canceled plans with Jackson. She seems more content than usual to just stay at home, doing whatever Lydia does when she’s alone, or to come over to Allison’s house, her perfectly pedicured feet resting in Allison’s lap while they watch romcoms and documentaries about space.

Jackson and Lydia have always fought a lot, but lately their fights have seemed—still just as intense—but _quieter_ , somehow.

Maybe she’s just been stressed about finals, Allison thinks.

They watch Black Swan on the huge flat screen TV in Lydia’s living room, which is unsettling. Allison’s heart rate jacks up during the—the sex scene, or the sex hallucination, or whatever it is—and her face feels unbearably hot. She makes sure that she doesn’t so much as brush against Lydia, and prays that Lydia’s mom won’t walk in.

Afterwards, they change into swimsuits and head outside. Allison thought that Lydia might make them drinks to celebrate the first night of summer vacation, but she doesn’t. Allison is a little glad. She’s not sure she should be relaxing her inhibitions around Lydia right now. The sun’s pretty much set, but the light in the pool and the tiki torches that border the patio throw Lydia’s face into sharp relief. Her hair shimmers in the torchlight, and Allison thinks that she looks like an ancient goddess of summertime.

They’re quiet for a little while. Lydia sits on the edge of the pool, her feet dangling in the water as she messes around on her phone. Allison actually gets in the pool, but she stays over by Lydia, propping her arms up on the concrete to hold herself half out of the water. There’s only an inch or two between her forearm and Lydia’s thigh, and their nearness feels a little reckless, like a dare. She rests her cheek on the concrete. Though it’s dark out, the cement is warm against her skin.

Next to her, Lydia makes a surprised noise, breaking the silence.

“What is it?” Allison asks immediately.

Lydia shoves her phone under Allison’s nose, her Facebook app displayed on the screen. “Stilinski got a soul bond,” she says.

“What?” Allison yelps and grabs for Lydia’s phone. For a heart-wrenching second, she’s convinced that he was right, that he got Lydia’s name inscribed on his wrist, but no, it’s—

“Is that a _guy’s_ name?” Allison chokes out.

Lydia takes her phone back and looks at the screen, pursing her lips. “Looks like it. Maybe it’s plantonic.” She tilts her head as she looks at Stiles’s unmistakably pale and freckled arm with the name “Derek Hale” scrawled across the wrist in spikey handwriting. It’s captioned “does anyone even kno who this is?”

“Yeah, I guess I just thought, you know, that if it was a guy, it would have been Scott.” Allison laughs uncomfortably.

Lydia makes a noncommittal noise, looks at the screen for a second longer, then sets her phone down. In one fluid motion, she pushes herself off of the patio and into the pool next to Allison. Her smooth leg slides across Allison’s slightly stubbly one as she does, sending a sudden flash of heat through Allison’s stomach. Allison is so swept up in the sensation that it takes her a couple of seconds to realize that Lydia is tugging at the knot on her bikini top next to Allison.

Allison pushes herself off the wall, propelling herself several feet away from Lydia as if she’s been burned. “Lydia!” she hisses. “What are you _doing?_ ”

Lydia snorts. “Don’t be such a killjoy, Allison! No one can see.”

I _can see!_ Allison wants to say. Instead, she says, “What if your mom comes home?”

“Allison, she’s not going to drive home from Oakland at eleven o’clock at night.” Lydia’s got the top of her bathing suit off and is already reaching down for her bottoms. Allison stares pointedly at the sky as Lydia throws her swimsuit onto the patio. Her own suit suddenly seems rough as it rubs against the skin on her breasts.

“I don’t think—” Allison tries again. Her voice is high and cracked. She clears her throat.

“It feels nice,” Lydia says coaxingly. She swims over to Allison, who is still looking upwards, and reaches out to grab one of the straps on Allison’s top.

“Don’t!” Allison snaps, shoving Lydia’s hand away. It’s quiet for a second, and then—

“Fine,” Lydia snaps. Allison would normally feel worried, because Lydia sounds a little pissed, but right now she’s having trouble feeling anything other than mortification. She can’t help but see a little of Lydia out of the corner of her eye, copper-colored hair spilling over the white skin of her exposed breasts and—she forces herself to think about something else. Anything else.

They’re silent. Allison can’t risk looking over at Lydia, but she has almost managed to relax when Lydia says shortly, “I’m ready for bed.” Allison does her best to avert her eyes when Lydia gets of out the pool, slings her swimsuit over one shoulder, and walks, naked and dripping, into the house. Allison gets out of the pool and wraps herself in a towel. She sits on the patio, head tilted back and eyes closed, the beginning of a headache pressing against the back of her eyes, for what she thinks is probably a safe amount of time before she goes into the house.

Inside, she changes into the oversized tee shirt and boxers she uses as pajamas, and hangs her swimsuit over the curtain rod in the guest bedroom to drip dry. She walks down the dark hallway towards the guest bedroom, her bare feet almost silent against the cool hardwood floor, but hesitates outside Lydia’s bedroom.

Growing up, sleepovers at friends’ houses always meant sharing a bed or, more often, crashing together on the living room floor in a nest of blankets, couch cushions, and pillows. She’d never had a friend before Lydia who had a house big enough for a guest bedroom, so maybe it’s normal that that’s where she usually sleeps when she stays over. The handful of times she’s slept in Lydia’s bed are nights where they’ve both been giddy with champagne or pineapple vodka or whatever else Lydia could produce from her mother’s liquor cabinets, nights when they fell laughing onto Lydia’s bed and talked until they fell asleep.

Allison misses those easy, carefree moments of friendship. Nothing has felt that simple and innocent and good since she’s turned eighteen. She rests her head against the doorframe, but she can’t make out any shapes in the dark room.

“Are you coming in or not?” Lydia asks finally. Though her voice sounds a little cross, it doesn’t have the angry edge it had outside.

Allison smiles. “Coming,” she replies, and makes her way through the dark to crawl into bed with Lydia.

Later, as Allison hovers on the border between wakefulness and sleep, she feels Lydia reach out and run her fingers through Allison’s hair.

~*~

Allison doesn’t sleep well in the week following her sleepover with Lydia, so when she gets the text, she wakes up, even though it’s early. Like, _really_ early. She rolls over and cracks her eyes to read Stiles’s message: _SOS i need ur help_

Suddenly feeling much more awake, Allison calls him. Stiles picks up on the second ring. She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Is Scott alright?” she asks. It’s the only reason Stiles would be texting her that she can think of. They’d been friends, sort of, when she was dating Scott, but Allison thinks that Stiles might have been a little less forgiving of the breakup than Scott was. Stiles always says he needs to make up for Scott’s pathological kindness.

“Wha—yeah, Scott’s fine. Allison, why are you even awake?”

Allison groans. “Because you texted me. At four thirty in the morning. Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Well.” Stiles pauses. “I need you to go to a club with me.”

She makes a face. “You need me to _what?_ Is this why you woke me up? Isn’t this like a you-and-Scott thing?”

“Scott’s got a thing with Kira, they’re going to the _beach._ ” Stiles’s tone clearly expresses what he thinks of best friends who had poorly-timed beach dates with their not-girlfriends. The offense seems forgotten, however, when Stiles adds, “Oh my god, Allison, I totally screwed up.”

“You should probably start from the beginning, Stiles, so I know _what’s going on_.”

“I met my soul bond!” Stiles hisses.

“Wait, you found him? How?” Allison asks. Last she’d heard, Stiles was bemoaning the fact that his soul mate (a) didn’t have a Facebook and (b) apparently didn’t live in a fifty mile radius of Beacon Hills.

“I just—stumbled into him! At the farmer’s market!” Stiles says, somewhat desperate. “I was just standing there, looking at some rhubarb—” yeah, Allison’s not even going to ask, she knows that Stiles has been trying to get his dad to eat healthier—“and there he was!”

“Buying rhubarb?” Allison asks.

“That is so not the point!” Stiles replies. “But no, actually, he was there selling stuff—apparently his family runs some kind of wildlife rehabilitation center, and they have orchards too. Like, apricots and shit. I heard his mom say his name, that’s how I knew who he was.”

“And you asked him out to a club,” Allison says tiredly, because she can see where this is going.

“No!” Stiles said defensively. “I asked for his number. I just asked him out to the club, like, an hour ago.”

Allison groans. “Wouldn’t it have been better to ask him to get coffee or something?” she asks. “Maybe get to know him better?”

“You didn’t _see_ him, Allison!” Stiles wails. “He’s like twenty-five! And hot! I don’t know what hot twenty-five year olds do for fun!”

There’s a question growing in the back of Allison’s mind. She knows she shouldn’t ask it—it’s too personal, and she and Stiles were never really close. She asks it anyways. “Stiles,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Are you—are you attracted to him?”  
  


“Um, yeah,” Stiles says. “Seriously, you should have seen him. I’m not exaggerating.”

“But what about Lydia?” Allison asks, a little desperately.

“Ah, first love,” Stiles says fondly. “Still, I don’t mind not having a bond with her when my _actual_ soul mate is a hunk of—”

“He’s a guy!” Allison hisses.

It’s silent except for the phone static. Allison feels like a bitch, is about to try to apologize, to reassure Stiles she isn’t homophobic or anything, when he says, “Yeah, he is. Allison, I’m bisexual.”

“You’re—what?” Allison asks, but she’s already running word stems through her head. She didn’t do very well in English that year, but she’s pretty sure she knows what that one means—bicycle, bilingual, bifocals—

“Yeah, you know, I like guys and girls. Well, really, it’s the attraction to people of multiple genders, but we’ll shelf that discussion for now—Allison, you can’t tell me you didn’t know gay people are a thing!”

“Of course I know gay people are a thing!” Allison says defensively. She feels a little dizzy. In the back of her head, she hears her mother whispering, _Fags_. “But I didn’t know you could like both—more than one?”

“More than one,” Stiles confirms. “Allison, how did you not know this? Everyone knows you’ve got a soul bond with a girl.”

“Everyone?” Allison asks, horrified.

“Yeah,” Stiles replies. “Like, NASA knows, probably.” There’s a beat of silence before he adds, “Well, your dad probably doesn’t realize it though. I mean everyone at school.”

“I though everyone thought I was bonded with Danny!”

“Dude, that rumor is like two months old,” Stiles chastises her.

“It could be platonic,” Allison says weakly.

“If it was platonic, you wouldn’t be so freaked out about telling people,” Stiles says sagely. “Allison, did you really not know about bisexuality?”

This is all too much. Allison has been staving off her sexual identity crisis for three months, and she’s not about to have it now, on the phone with Stiles. Whoever says it doesn’t pay to procrastinate has obviously never been in her shoes. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she tells him.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “But about the Jungle—”

“The Jungle?” she repeats, horrified.

“Well, yeah, we’re like dude-lovin’-dudes,” Stiles says.

Allison buries her face in her pillow, ignoring Stiles’s voice in her ear. If she goes to a club—a _gay_ club—and her dad finds out, he would pay the extra late registration fee and she’d be off to Bible camp for the rest of the summer. But Stiles is a mess, he obviously needs help. And Allison—

Allison is a little curious.

“Fine,” she says, cutting him off. “But, Stiles, how are we going to get into a club? We’re not twenty-one!”

“Don’t worry,” Stiles says. “I have a plan. I’ll pick you up at nine tonight?”

~*~

Stiles’s plan turns out to be jimmying the lock to the back door of the Jungle. Allison stands close to him, her eyes scanning the alley, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “I do not want to get arrested tonight,” she hisses. “Is this even going to work?”

“We’re not going to get arrested, my dad’s the sheriff,” Stiles says. “And of course it’s going to work. This place keeps getting citations because they never fix this shitty lock and underage kids keep sneaking in.” His sentence is punctuated by the click of the lock as the door swings inward.

“Great,” Allison mutters, but she follows Stiles into the club.

She guesses that the press of bodies inside isn’t really much worse than it is when Lydia throws a huge party, but at least Lydia’s parties spill into her backyard. In the Jungle, there are more half-naked men than Allison has seen in her entire life, and the lights are dim and the whole place is humid and warm. It smells like sweat and beer. She doesn’t know why Stiles thought this was a good idea.

And speaking of Stiles, it’s painfully obvious that he’s never been to a club before. Hell, it’s painfully obvious that he shouldn’t be at one _now_. He’s had some sort of growth spurt over the last year, so he’s like six feet tall, but he’s still as skinny and awkward as any eighteen year old soon-to-be senior in high school. Allison isn’t as good at picking out clothing for guys as Lydia is, so Stiles probably isn’t even dressed appropriately, but then again, neither is Allison. She wasn’t sure she wanted to make herself look twenty-one and sexy. She doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea, and if her dad _does_ end up having to bail her out of jail for breaking and entering, it will probably go better if she isn’t wearing a miniskirt.

Stiles makes a sudden grab for Allison’s arm and gesticulates wildly towards the bar. “There he is!” he says.

Allison looks. It takes her a second to pick Derek out. He’s sort of cute, she thinks, if you’re into guys with scarier eyebrows than Robert Pattinson. He’s definitely older than them, but Allison doesn’t think he’s actually twenty-five. He really needs to shave, but if she had to guess, he’s maybe around twenty. He’s scowling, but in an awkward why-am-I-here? sort of way. There’s a girl standing with him. Based on the dark hair and killer cheekbones, Allison guesses that they’re related.

Stiles interrupts her cautious examination of the pair by grabbing her arm and dragging her towards the bar. “I can’t believe he brought a girl,” he mutters.

“You brought a girl,” Allison points out. She gently wrests her arm from Stiles’s grip, but trails behind him as they walk over to meet Derek Hale.

“Yeah, but—” Stiles begins, and then cuts himself off. “Hey, Derek! Uh, this is my friend Allison. She’s here to make sure you’re not, like, a serial killer or something.”

“A serial killer?” Derek asks, looking unimpressed.

“Yeah,” Stiles says earnestly. “You kind of have serial killer eyebrows.” He uses his fingers to create a rough approximation of Derek’s eyebrows and gives a melodramatic scowl.

Allison covers her face with her hands. Derek apparently doesn’t have anything to say in response to that. There’s an awkward stutter in the conversation before the girl next to him uncrosses her arms and sticks her hand out to shake Allison’s, then Stiles’s. “I’m Cora, Derek’s sister,” she says. “Come on, Allison, we’ll leave these lovebirds to talk and I’ll buy you a drink.” She rests a hand on Allison’s shoulder and steers her away from Stiles and Derek.

“I’m not twenty-one,” Allison protests.

Cora snorts. “I have a fake, it’s fine. Besides, they should probably start the bonding process ASAP. It’ll take Derek a year to work up to kissing him. Oh well, at least it looks like they’re equally socially inept.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Allison looks back over her shoulder. Derek and Stiles are standing about six feet apart, but appear to be talking. She’s not sure how they can even hear each other over the music at that distance. “So, how old is Derek? Did he never try to find Stiles? The bond _is_ reciprocated, right?”

“Looks like it,” Cora replies, shoving her way through a throng of people to lean against the bar. “Can I get a vodka coke and a—” she turns to Allison. “What do you want?”

“A margarita?” Allison replies.

“A vodka coke and a margarita,” Cora tells the bartended, handing over a credit card. She turns back to Allison. “Have you ever seen your friend’s handwriting? It’s shit. Our mom actually paid to send Derek to a specialist after his eighteenth birthday, and she couldn’t even figure out what it was. What _does_ it say? I’m pretty sure it’s not Stiles.”

“I’m not sure, actually,” Allison says. “It’s something Polish. Scott—his best friend—he knows, but he’s sworn to secrecy, and I’m not sure he could pronounce it anyways.”

“Hmph. You’d think his parents would have put a little more though into what would happen if—when—he got the bond. Derek moped for a year straight, he thought he was never going to figure out who it was. I tried to convince him to make one of those Facebook posts—you know, ‘share to help me find my soul mate!’—but he was too embarrassed. He’s the first person in our family to have the bond in like three generations.”

The bartender sets their drinks down in front of them. Allison sips hers slowly, listening to Cora talk about her family. In addition to Derek, Cora has an older sister named Laura who’s attending law school in New York, and a handful of younger cousins. Like Stiles said, they run a non-profit wildlife rehabilitation center—“We get a surprising number of mountain lions, actually,”—and with the exception of Laura, there are four generations of the Hale family and a handful of interns living in a house out on the Center’s grounds, about an hour from downtown Beacon Hills. At some point during the conversation, Cora orders them both second drinks.

There are some short pauses in the conversation where it seems like Cora is waiting for Allison to say something, maybe about Stiles’s family, but she’s not really sure what to say. She knows his mom died when he was younger, but she doesn’t know much about his extended family.

Finally, Cora sets down her empty glass on the bar and grabs Allison’s wrist. “We should dance,” she says. 

“Um.” Allison looks over at Stiles and tries to psychically convey that she’s ready to leave. He doesn’t look away from Derek. There’s still a lot of personal space between the two of them, but they look a little more relaxed. “Okay,” she says.

She follows Cora onto the dance floor. Most of the people there are guys, grinding against one another in packs of two or more, but there are a handful of girls as well. In the middle of the dance floor, two girls are making out instead of dancing. Allison blushes and looks away.

Cora slides behind her, but Allison’s not really into the grinding thing, so she turns around to face the other girl and rests her forearms on Cora’s shoulders. Cora has intense dark eyes, and her breath is a little sweet from the vodka coke. She’s pretty, Allison realizes, feeling a little weird. Not her type, not as pretty as Lydia is, but she’s pretty.

Dancing is a lot easier than Allison thought it would be. The music is loud and rhythmic, and she finds herself swaying along with it almost naturally. At some point, Cora’s hands come up to rest on Allison’s hips. She wonders if she should pull away, but it’s just a dance. A dance in a gay bar. With a girl who, Allison guesses, probably likes other girls.

She shoves that thought out of her mind. Cora leans forward and rests her head on Allison’s shoulder. When she says, “Let’s go outside. I need some air,” a few minutes later, her lips brush against Allison’s ear.

Allison knows it’s a bad idea. She does. And maybe the margaritas were a little stronger than what she’s used to, but she’s—curious, so curious, and she follows Cora out through the same door that Stiles had jimmied to get them in. The air outside isn’t cool by any stretch of the imagination, but it still feels good compared to the stifling heat of the club. She reaches up and brushes a strand of hair out of Cora’s face. Cora cups Allison’s cheek in one hand, leans in, and kisses her.

It’s different. Cora’s not short, but she’s also not much taller than Allison, and it’s a little weird, because she’s used to standing on her tiptoes to kiss Scott. Cora smells like liquor and vanilla. Allison cautiously runs her hands up Cora’s sides and across her back. When she parts her lips with a sigh, Allison slips her tongue in. She tries her best to stop thinking, to just feel. Cora breaks the kiss and nips at Allison’s ear. Allison’s hands travel up from Cora’s hips and she tangles them in her hair.

“Lyd—” Allison catches herself before she finishes the word. Suddenly, she feels like she can’t breathe. She jerks out of Cora’s arm, stumbling backwards several steps, panting slightly. Cora makes a surprised noise, but lets her go. Reflexively, Allison rubs her left wrist, where the bracelets cover Lydia’s name. Cora follows the movement with her eyes, her mouth twisting.

The door to the Jungle swings open, and Stiles and Derek walk out into the alley. Stiles stops talking midsentence, his hands freezing in the air, when he catches sight of them. Cora’s hair is mussed and her lips are puffy. Allison doesn’t look much better. She thinks Cora might have given her a hickey.

“Alright,” Stiles says finally. “Uh, Allison, it was getting a little late, so I thought we might head out?”

“Yeah,” Allison says. ”It was, um, nice meeting you guys.” She waits until Stiles mumbles a quick goodbye and follows him out of the alley and towards the parking garage where he had left the jeep.

Behind her, she hears Derek ask, “What did you do that for?”

“I didn’t know she had a soul bond!” Cora protests. Allison tunes out whatever Derek says in response.

~*~

Stiles doesn’t look at her at all during the ride home. Allison’s muscles are completely tensed up, and she’s ready to throw herself out of the car by the time he parks outside her house. She hasn’t stopped blushing since Derek and Stiles walked out into the alley.

“Allison, wait,” Stiles says softly.

She freezes, gripping the door handle so hard her knuckles are white. “What, Stiles?” she snaps. Her voice is raspy.

“Allison, it’s _okay_ ,” Stiles says. “You just went to a gay bar with me so I could meet up with my soul mate who, by the way, is a man. I don’t care if you like girls! And Scott and Lydia and Jackson wouldn’t either!”

“I can’t,” Allison says, her voice cracking. “You don’t understand, Stiles, I just can’t, my dad would—and Lydia, Lydia can’t—” She shuts up a second too late. God, she’s so fucking _transparent_. Her eyes are beginning to burn and water, and her stomach turns over uneasily.

There’s a moment of silence before Stiles says, “Lydia? Your soul mate is _Lydia_?”

It’s too much. Allison sobs. “Stiles, I don’t know what to _do!_ I love her so much and I can’t do anything!”

“Uh, okay, it’ll be okay,” Stiles says. “Come on, Allison, it’ll be alright. Everything will work itself out and you’ll be okay.” He digs around the floorboards in the backseat for a couple of seconds before producing a slightly battered box of tissues, which he thrusts towards Allison. She takes one and buries her face in it.

She’s not sure how long she cries. Stiles hovers nervously beside her for a minute before tentatively resting his hand on her shoulder, murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” over and over. Finally, hiccupping a little, she swipes at her reddened eyes and blows her nose. Stiles is looking at her like he’s not sure she won’t start crying again.

“I’m fine,” Allison says to reassure him.

Stiles looks like he’s not sure that that’s true, but he doesn’t contradict her. “Allison, if you need to talk to anyone, I’m here,” he says finally. “I won’t tell anyone, not even Scott. I promise.”

Allison climbs out of the jeep without saying anything in reply. Stiles watches her, the jeep idling, until she goes inside. It’s a couple of hours before she feels calm enough to text him: _thanks._

~*~

The next day, Allison gets texts from Scott and Lydia within twenty minutes of each other, inviting her out to lunch with the group. She agrees to go, even though she doesn’t feel great. Her head hurts and she’s nauseous and her mouth feels paper-dry, even though she’s had like five glasses of water since she woke up. She thinks she might swear off margaritas forever.

They go to a little Mexican restaurant, and manage to fit way too many people in their corner booth. A last minute maneuver means that Allison is sitting on the edge next to Danny, rather than having to be next to Scott, or Lydia, or anyone else who would want her to talk, really. Allison finds several flecks of glitter sticking to her skin throughout the meal, and tries to pick them off surreptitiously. Stiles looks at her sympathetically from the other corner of the table. She doesn’t say much, just eats her chicken tacos.

As they leave, Lydia comes up on Allison’s side. “Are you okay? You seem—is that a hickey?”

“What?” Allison says, alarmed. She quickly covers her neck with her hand.

“It is!” Lydia furrows her brow. “When did you—”

“It’s nothing,” Allison insists. “Just a bruise.”

Lydia raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything further.

~*~

**July**

Lydia invites Allison out to her lake house at the end of June. “You can help me get ready for the party I’m throwing out there for the Fourth of July,” she tells Allison. “Besides, you need a break. I’ve barely seen you at all in the last three weeks.”

“Okay,” Allison says, feeling a little guilty. She’s avoided being alone with Lydia since she kissed Cora at the club, opting instead to spend time with her dad and work on school stuff. Yesterday, she spent three hours listening to her dad talk about this week’s sermon, and she’s already done with one of the books they were assigned to read over the summer.

Still, Lydia seems—normal, not as reclusive as she was in the week following the championship party or as—whatever she was, that night at her house when she went skinny-dipping. Allison spends the first night at the lake house feeling hyperaware of Lydia’s bedroom just a few yards from where Allison is sleeping on the couch, but after that, she relaxes a little. It’s nice to spend a couple of days with her best friend, painting their toes, laying on the boat dock to tan, and binge-watching America’s Next Top Model.

“Let’s put highlights in your hair,” Lydia says out of the blue one night as they sit on the couch. “There’s bleach under the bathroom sink.”

“No. Absolutely no. Why do you even have bleach?” Allison says.

“Because I know you’d look great with highlights,” Lydia replied. “Come on, Allison, live a little.” She reaches out and runs her fingers through Allison’s hair, and Allison knows she’s already lost the fight.

“Fine,” Allison grumbles. “But if my dad kills me, it’s on you.”

“He probably won’t even notice the differences. Guys don’t,” Lydia says confidently.

Lydia spends nearly an hour carefully pulling strands of Allison’s hair through a highlighting cap and coating them in bleach. The feel of her fingers against Allison’s scalp gives her goose bumps, and her head spins from her soul mate’s nearness.

~*~

It’s already hot and humid when Lydia prods Allison awake on the morning of the fourth. Lydia’s in athletic shorts, and her hair is swept out of her face in a messy knot on top of her head. She and Allison spend an hour moving furniture to the edges of the room to free up floor space, stashing anything that looks like it might be broken by drunk high school students back in Lydia’s mom’s bedroom, and lining the deck and patio with red, white, and blue Christmas lights. Lydia produces a canvas tablecloth with flags printed on it and drapes it over the picnic table. Decorating completed, Allison drives into town with Lydia’s credit card to buy barbeque essentials. 

Lydia stays at the lake house. “I have about three hundred Jell-O shots to make,” she says.

Allison loads up her cart with hamburger meat, hotdogs, buns, condiments, chips, soda, and cookies, and squeezes her eyes shut when the cashier rings up the total. She double checks that the bracelets on her left wrist are firmly in place before she signs Lydia’s name on the PIN pad. Her signature looks almost identical to Lydia’s, and she thinks that maybe she’s spent too much time in the last four months looking at the mark.

Jackson’s car is parked on the curb when Allison pulls back into the driveway. She scowls at it before gathering the grocery bags into her arm and walking into the house.

“—don’t know why it’s such a big deal, Jackson,” Lydia is saying from inside the kitchen. Her voice is stiff.

“You haven’t answered any of my texts in two days, Lydia!” Jackson snaps back. “I called you _three_ times last night!”

“I’ve been busy!” she says. “ _You_ invited the entire senior class to my lake house, remember? Do you not see the two hundred Jell-O shots I still need to make?”

Allison peers around the corner into the kitchen. Lydia is standing over the stove with her back to Jackson. The kitchen counters are covered in little plastic cups, half of which are filled with red and blue liquid. Jackson is slouched against the kitchen island, scowling at Lydia’s back.

“How long does it take to send one text message?” he says. “I was worried!”

“Obviously not that worried,” Lydia replies acidly.

Feeling awkward, Allison backs away and sets the grocery bags down on the coffee table in the living room as quietly as she can. She creeps into Lydia’s bedroom and falls back onto the bed. Lydia and Jackson’s voices are getting louder, but the walls muffle the sound enough that Allison can’t hear what they’re saying. Eventually the sound drops off.

She’s been in the bedroom for nearly half an hour when Lydia comes in and closes the door softly behind her. She plops down onto the bed next to Allison. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but if she’d been crying, she isn’t now. She’s holding an almost-empty fifth of vodka in one hand.

“Jackson is finishing the Jell-O shots,” she says, and takes a swig from the vodka bottle.

Allison makes a face. “Jackson’s a dick. And that can’t taste good.”

“It doesn’t.” Lydia takes another sip. It’s quiet for a minute before she says, “All Jackson ever wants to do is go out with his friends, get shitfaced, and screw around.”

Allison looks skeptically at the bottle in Lydia’s hand. “I thought you liked going out.”

“I do. It’s just…” Lydia shrugs. “I don’t know. I miss doing things with just us, you know? And he acts like a completely different person when he’s with his friends.”

“Male posturing,” Allison says wisely. She reaches over, gently pries the bottle away from Lydia, and sets it on the nightstand. “You don’t need that. You’re going to have like, eight Jell-O shots tonight.”

“I wish I could just stay in this room with you all night,” Lydia says.

“You’d miss the fireworks,” Allison says reasonably. “But you’ve got an hour before you need to do anything. Where’s your laptop? We can watch Say Yes to the Dress.”

They watch three episodes before Lydia reluctantly leaves the bedroom to finish decorating, Allison trailing behind her to hold things and give her opinion when asked. People start filtering in a little after eight that night. When Allison looks around for Lydia at ten, she’s nowhere to be seen. A senior lacrosse player is shotgunning a beer, and Jackson is egging him on.

Lydia is sitting alone out on the dock when Allison finds her. There’s a full plastic cup of beer sitting next to her. She’s wearing a black tank top and skinny jeans rolled up to her knees, and her feet are submerged in the lake water. Allison sits down next to her and takes off her sandals.

“Having fun?” Lydia asks.

“It’s a good party,” Allison says. “Everyone was dancing when I left to come outside. You always throw great parties.”

“It’s a skill,” Lydia says. “Did you see Jackson?”

“No,” Allison lies. “Should I have?”

“No.” Lydia turns away, stares out over the lake.

She’s so incredibly beautiful, Allison thinks. Her shoulders are slick with sweat, and her skin is glowing under the starlight. Allison’s chest feels tight and it’s hard to breathe. “What’s he doing?”

Lydia shrugs, tilts her head until it’s resting on Allison’s shoulder. Allison does her best to hold herself completely still. “We just don’t really connect like we used to, you know? And I want someone who likes me for _me_ , not the parties and the alcohol and—” Lydia sighs.

Allison turns her head until she can see Lydia’s face in the dark, until their foreheads are almost touching. Lydia looks back at her steadily. Her pink lip-gloss is smeared. “I know,” Allison says softly. She leans forward a little, closing the gap between them—

Something booms in the distance. Allison and Lydia jump apart as the first firework bursts into a shower of red sparks overhead. Guests rush outside of Lydia’s lake house, cheering as the fireworks continue to explode overhead. Allison blushes fiercely, and for a second she thinks she might burst into tears. Lydia, sitting across from her, looks like she might be hyperventilating.

The fireworks last for almost half an hour. Allison stays on the dock for the entire show, trying to keep herself from sneaking glances at Lydia. When she does look over, Lydia is looking fixedly at the sky. After it’s over, she can hear cars start up as people begin to head out.

“Yo, Lydia!” Jackson yells from the patio. His words are slurred. “Danny and I are going to head out to that club that doesn’t ID. Do you want to come?”

“No, thanks!” Lydia yells back, sounding forcibly cheerful. “You go! I’m tired.”

“Alright! I’ll see you tomorrow!” Jackson replies.

Allison and Lydia sit for a few minutes in a somewhat awkward silence. Finally, Lydia gets to her feet. “I should probably go say goodbye to people,” she says, and begins to walk back to the house.

“Lydia?” Allison says. Lydia stops, looks back at Allison. Allison swallows hard. “I like you for who you are.”

“I know,” Lydia says, and walks away.

~*~

“Well, what do you _want_ to do?”

Allison glares at Stiles. “I don’t know! That’s the problem! You’re my friend, so I need you to give me some advice!” She’s already starting to regret telling Stiles about the weird almost-kiss she had with Lydia, but she didn’t know what else she could have done. Not talking about it for the last three days, not asking Lydia what the hell had happened, had been driving her up the wall. She felt like she might crack if she didn’t tell someone. So she called Stiles, and he told her to come over.

Stiles’s room is messy, although he insists that he has a _system_ , and it smells like acne cleanser and Old Spice. Allison is half hanging off the edge of his sloppily made bed. There’s a bookcase directly across from her stuffed with books, everything from the Harry Potter series to biographies of World War II generals, but nearly half of it is taken up by books on soul bonds: _The Secrets of the Soul Bond, Unlocking the Dynamics of Soul Attraction, A Complete Guide to Your Soul Mate Relationship, Making Your Soul Bound Marriage Work._ Stiles, sitting at his computer and tossing a lacrosse ball from hand to hand, follows her gaze over to the bookshelf.

“I maybe went a little crazy at the bookstore after my birthday,” he says. “You can borrow some if you want, but they’re about as helpful as _Seventeen_ —the magazine? I know, I’ve read that too.”

Allison raises an eyebrow. “You read _Seventeen_?”

Stiles shrugs. “Hey, I’ve got no idea how to date, I need as much help as I can get. Which is proof that you should not in any lifetime be asking me for relationship advice.”

“How is that going, by the way? How’s—Derek?” It feels weird to say his name out loud in this context. Allison guesses that Stiles’s dad doesn’t care—Stiles isn’t covering up his wrist with bandages and bracelets and long sleeved shirts after all—but she still feels nervous, knowing that he could overhear them.

“Good, I think,” Stiles says. He sounds uncertain. “I mean, we haven’t, like, kissed or anything yet. And he doesn’t talk a lot. But we watched _The Avengers_ together last weekend. And I met his family. They seem—enthusiastic. And nice.”

“Cora said he would probably take a while to work up to kissing you,” Allison says, trying not to blush. Thinking of kissing Cora still makes her feel queasy and ashamed.

Stiles doesn’t seem to notice Allison’s discomfort. “She would know, I guess. How are things going with your dad?”

Allison’s stomach drops like Stiles has pulled a rug from underneath her. “Okay, I guess. He still doesn’t know. I mean, he’s suspicious, he knows that something’s wrong. But I don’t think he thinks that it’s—this. He doesn’t know how bad it is.”

Stiles hesitates. “Maybe—maybe you should think about telling him? It might not be as bad as you think.”

Allison looks at Stiles like he’s grown a second head. “ _Not that bad?_ Are you kidding me?”

“Well,” he says, looking uncertain. “I mean, he’s your dad, right? So he might not be happy, but he has to—to get over it, or whatever, right? Because you’re all he has. I think he would probably be fine. You know, if you’re happy.”

“You don’t understand, Stiles!” Allison snaps. “Of course it’s all fine for you! You’ve got a soul mate that’s into you, and your dad couldn’t care less that he’s a guy, as long as you’re happy. But I’m telling you, it’s _different_ with my dad. It’s not just about me being happy—which I’m not, by the way. This entire situation fucking sucks. But the point is, it’s about something more to him—about the Word of God, and the immortal soul, and doing what’s right. To him, it’s the difference between heaven and eternal damnation.”

Stiles looks shocked at her outburst. “But—there are churches that are _fine_ with gay people!” he protests. “This is—it’s California, for god’s sake!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Allison demands. “The point is, he’s not. Finding out about this—about me—it would crush him. I don’t want him to know that I’m this way.” She looks down at her lap and tries to keep from crying. Despite her efforts, she can feel her eyes watering.

Stiles is quiet for a minute. Then he reaches out and covers her hand with his. “Allison, I’m sorry,” he says. “For pushing, and for not understanding what it’s like with you and your dad. But— _you_ know that there’s nothing wrong with you, right? You know there’s nothing wrong with liking girls?”

Allison pulls her hand away. “I hate being this way,” she whispers. “I want to go back to how it was before.”

“There is no before,” Stiles says, kind but firm. “The soul bond didn’t make you this way. Who you are—it hasn’t changed, not that much, anyways. Liking women, loving Lydia—that’s a part of you. Is it really that bad?”

Allison is quiet for a minute. “No,” she finally whispers. It’s at least partially true. “Loving Lydia is—it’s like a light. I love her so much.” The words lift her up a little, and for the first time in weeks, she thinks that everything might turn out okay.

“I know,” Stiles says, and hugs her. “Allison, I know.”

~*~

When Allison checks Facebook a few days later, she sits back and wonders if all of her father’s sermons about the biblical end times are true, because this is surely a sign of the end of the world as she knows it.

 _Lydia Martin went from being “in a relationship” to “single.”_ There are thirty-six likes.

It’s weird enough that Lydia and Jackson are apparently broken up. It’s weirder that Lydia didn’t tell Allison about it first. It’s possible that Jackson dumped Lydia, but thinking about Lydia and Jackson’s interactions at the party on the Fourth, she doesn’t think that’s likely. Even if this was some out of the blue freak occurrence, Lydia should have _called_ , should have told Allison about it before changing her Facebook status and basically alerting the whole world.

Lydia’s been a little distant for the past couple of days though, Allison realizes. Not so much that it set off any warnings—not enough that Allison had in any way saw this coming—but it’s been nearly a week since the party and they’ve barely seen each other, and she’s been answering all of Allison’s texts with one or two word responses. Allison had just assumed she was busy doing Lydia things—starting her SAT prep class, tutoring underprivileged kids in math two towns over, working shifts at her brand new part time job at the Victoria’s Secret in the mall. 

Allison glances over at her phone, lying on her bed where she’d tossed it when she came upstairs. Her first instinct is to call Lydia, to see if she was okay, but what if—

Allison has almost managed to convince herself that she had blown that moment at the Fourth of July party out of context, that the tension she’d felt was one-sided, that she’s exaggerated that sense of an almost-kiss in her memory. Almost.

What if Lydia _doesn’t_ want to talk to her? What if Lydia had felt what Allison had? She might be disgusted. She might be afraid to be alone with Allison. Worse, she might pity Allison, and feel the need to back away from their friendship, away from Allison and her too-strong feelings. She might be trying to let her down easy.

These thoughts punch through Allison’s chest like a fist. She tries to stand up, to walk away from her computer, but her knees give out and she lands with a thump on her floor. Her chest heaves, but it doesn’t feel like she’s getting enough air. The edges of her vision are going fuzzy.

In the corner of her mind, she has the wherewithal to think that this must be a panic attack. She’s seen Stiles have them, once or twice, although she hadn’t fathomed how bad they felt. She’s not entirely sure she isn’t dying.

She’s not sure how long it takes for her breathing to return to normal. Five or ten minutes, maybe, although it feels like much longer. Slowly, she becomes aware of her surroundings again—the hum of her computer, the sounds of her dad moving around in the kitchen downstairs. Her pulse is still a little too fast and her head aches, but she is able to think again.

 _Lydia_. Surely she would have said something to Allison, if she was angry. Allison has seen Lydia shut down people before—Stiles, some drunk and handsy senior football player, a girl in their geometry class asking for donations for some pro-life group. Lydia isn’t afraid of confrontation.

Allison looks down at her wrist. Sometime during the panic attack, she had clawed at her arms, her nails leaving red marks on her skin. The bandages covering the mark of her soul bond are halfway undone, her bracelets scattered across the floor. Slowly, her hands shaking a little, she traces Lydia’s name.

Maybe Lydia is just upset about Jackson. She’s a little like a cat that way, not letting anyone see her pain or confusion. Allison had thought she was the exception. Once, only months ago, she thought they would always share everything. Even if that wasn’t true, though, Lydia is probably hurting right now, and it is Allison’s job to help her through this. They are, if nothing else, best friends.

Allison grabs her phone. Lydia doesn’t answer her call, but Allison expected that, and hangs up instead of leaving a voicemail. Quickly, she re-wraps her wrist and gathers up her bracelets, shoving them back onto her arm before she rushes downstairs.

“Going out?” her dad asks, sounding somewhat alarmed, as Allison scoops his keys off the counter.

“Yeah, sorry!” Allison calls over her shoulder as she scrambles towards the door. “It’s Lydia, it’s a girl-emergency thing. I’ll call if I end up spending the night!”

Allison’s dad sighs and waves her off, as he does anytime she brings up something too female for him to understand. “Alright, drive carefully.”

She slams the front door closed in response.

~*~

Lydia’s front door is locked and she doesn’t answer when Allison knocks, so she heads around the back of the house and hops the fence into the yard. Lydia is sitting by her pool. She’s wearing an oversized tee shirt and athletic shorts, her feet dangling off the edge of the concrete and into the water. Allison feels a strong sense of déjà vu walking up to her, like they are somehow repeating the events at the lake house the week before. The thought makes her hesitate, but after a minute she lowers herself down by Lydia. Everything is quiet, and the light in the pool dances across Lydia’s pale skin, turning her a blueish green. She looks like some kind of chlorine-dwelling water nymph.

“I wondered if you’d come,” Lydia says after a minute of silence.

“Of course I did,” Allison says immediately. “Lydia, you’re my best friend.”

“And you’re mine,” she says, so quietly that Allison can barely hear her. Her voice more normal, she says, “I was just tired of him. Jackson. The drinking, the parties. And the way I felt—there’s got to be something more, you know?”

“I know,” Allison replies. And suddenly, she’s thinking about what this means—what this _could_ mean—for them. She’s thinking about Lydia without Jackson to hold her back. She thinks about Lydia’s long, soft hair and her pale, soft skin and that almost— _almost_ —kiss on the dock of the lake house, about Lydia making pina coladas and floating in the pool, about staying up all night talking and about Lydia’s long, slender fingers running through her hair.

She looks over at Lydia, and Lydia is looking back, and Allison thinks that maybe—just maybe—Lydia is thinking about all of that, too. Moving slowly, barely breathing, Allison leans in and presses her lips to Lydia’s.

Lydia’s lips are soft and smooth and they part easily underneath Allison’s. Her breath is warm against Allison’s mouth and smells faintly of strawberry chap stick. It’s so different from her kiss with Cora at the club, slower and sweeter, different even from the kisses she had shared with Scott. Her heart feels like it might stutter to a stop and she can feel herself flushing, but she doesn’t stop because something about this kiss feels like _forever_.

Lydia is the one who finally breaks the kiss, leaning only far enough back to rest her head on Allison’s shoulder. “Finally.”

~*~

**August**

The weeks following that night are filled with ice cream dates, hours spent in Lydia’s living watching Say Yes to the Dress with Lydia’s head in her lap or trying to dunk one another in the pool, and kissing. Lots and lots of kissing. When Allison sleeps over, they make out on Lydia’s bed before falling asleep, their legs tangled up with one another. Being close enough to Lydia to smell her shampoo is still enough to set Allison’s heart racing and fill her stomach with butterflies, and her face hurts from smiling so much. It is the happiest she’s been in her entire life.

Still, the soul bond doesn’t make life perfect.

Allison spends so many nights over at Lydia’s house that her dad begins to joke about never seeing her. When he does, she smiles tightly at him and makes offhand remarks about “having to study for the SAT” and “looking at college applications” and “getting a head start on senior year.” Simply being in her house is enough to make her anxious, and she never invites Lydia over anymore. Being in the church for an hour and a half on Sunday morning, breathing in the familiar scent of cheap industrial cleaner and old hymnals, is enough to make her want to vomit. She’d told Stiles about the kiss, but no one else. Her secret weighs more heavily on her, now that she and Lydia are—whatever they are.

And that’s—that’s the other problem. Her search history on Google is pretty much nothing but variants on “how to DTR with your soul mate,” but Stiles was right—the advice on Cosmo and Seventeen is shit when it comes to a situation like hers. Lydia’s eighteenth birthday is still eight months away, and Allison has no idea if the soul bond will be reciprocated. Worst-case scenario—Lydia bonds with someone else. It’s a thought that’s enough to have Allison’s throat tightening and her eyes burning with tears. Often, Allison catches Lydia staring at Allison’s still-covered arm as if she’s thinking the same thing.

“You would think that discovering my latent bisexuality and falling for my best friend would be enough stress,” she says to herself one afternoon as she lies on her bed, staring at her ceiling. Lydia’s at work and isn’t off until five. “But no,” she continues, “I have to deal with an—an _expiration_ date, too.”

She tries not to think too much about the possibility of the soul bond being reciprocated. She thinks it would be better if she doesn’t get her hopes up, just in case.

“Allison!” her dad calls from downstairs. “There’s someone at the door for you!”

Frowning, Allison rolls out of bed and walks downstairs. Sure enough, Allison’s dad is holding the front door open, revealing a guy that Allison vaguely recognizes from her Spanish class last year holding a vase full of violets. She hesitates for a second, totally weirded out, before looking over his shoulder and seeing a large white delivery van over his shoulder: Beacon Hills Nursery & Florist Services.

Suddenly, she realizes what is going on. Mortified, she rushes forward and basically yanks the flowers out of his hands. When he hands her the card that comes with them, she shoves it roughly into the pocket of her jeans shorts, but not before she recognizes Lydia’s name in the same elegant script that decorates her wrist.

She thanks the delivery guy, and her dad lets the front door swing shut when he heads back to his van. She can feel him looking at her, but she keeps her eyes on the floor. Nothing can stop him from seeing the blush she can feel creeping into her cheeks.

“So,” he says finally. “Who are those from?”

“Um,” Allison says. “Scott.”

He frowns at her. “I thought you two broke up?”

“We did,” Allison says. “We, uh, got back together. Recently.”

“Well,” her dad says. “Are things, uh, not working out with your soul bond?” He gestures towards her covered wrist.

“I—I don’t know,” Allison says.

“Oh. He’s younger than you?” her dad says, his entire posture softening as if _this_ , then, is a problem he can understand.

“Yeah,” Allison says. It’s not a lie.

“Well,” her dad says again. “I can’t tell you what to do. That’s something you need to decide for yourself. Just—be careful, okay? And pray on it. I’m sure your bond will be reciprocated. You’re a wonderful young woman, and any man would be lucky to have you in his life. So make sure you’re thinking this through. I don’t want things to get—get messy, with you and Scott, when that happens. I know his friendship is important to you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Allison says, her voice small. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I’m not saying this to hurt you,” he says. “I love you, sweetheart. I just want you to be happy.” He squeezes her shoulder, then heads back to the living room, clearly uncomfortable with the moment of intimacy. Once he’s situated on the couch, not looking her way, Allison pulls the now-crumpled card out of her pocket. Lydia had wrote, “Happy one month anniversary!” on the white cardstock in purple ink, and signed it with a large heart and her name.

~*~

Almost as soon as Allison comes over that night, Lydia brings the flowers up. “Did you like them?” she asks, obviously excited and a little breathless. “Sappho—she was this queer Greek poet from Ancient Greece—she wrote a poem and described herself and her lover as wearing garlands of violets. In the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for women to gift their female lovers with violets.”

“Lydia,” Allison says, “you can’t _do_ stuff like that! My dad was home, and I had to tell him Scott and I were back together!”

Lydia visibly deflates. “Oh god—I’m so sorry, Allison, I thought that he’d be at the church working today—”

“It’s okay,” Allison says, feeling guilty for ruining Lydia’s fun. “And they were beautiful, and I loved them. Just—he can’t find out about this, okay?”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she says again.

Allison kisses her, cutting her off. “Forget about it,” she says.

Lydia doesn’t really respond to the kiss, looks away when Allison tells her to forget the flowers. Lydia looks like she wants to say something, but purses her lips instead. The space between them suddenly feels awkward, more awkward than it has since they got together.

“Let’s watch a movie,” Lydia says finally, and Allison frowns, considering whether she should pursue the subject. When Lydia grabs her hand and pulls her to the couch, she decides to let the subject drop—watching movies with Lydia tends to involve very little attention to the television and a lot more making out.

This movie is no exception. They’re barely ten minutes in when Lydia begins running her fingers up and down Allison’s thigh, making her feel hot and—well, turned-on. Allison concentrates on listening for Lydia’s mom to pull into the driveway as Lydia begins to kiss up her neck and across her jawline. She wants no more close calls today. As a result, when Ms. Martin comes in nearly half an hour later, they’re both a little rumpled but sitting a respectable distance apart on the couch. Lydia eyes Allison like she isn’t sure keeping their secret is worth stopping, and Allison blushes. Even though they’d just been kissing, Allison’s body aches for more.

After her mom goes to her bedroom to read and the movie credits are rolling, Lydia asks, “When did you figure out you were a lesbian?”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Allison says. “I’m bisexual.”  
  


“Really?” Lydia asks, curiously. “How does that work, with the soul bond?”

Allison shrugs. “Just because I’m bonded to—to a girl—” neither of them had addressed the fact that she was bonded to Lydia yet, and like hell she was going to be the first one to bring it up—“that doesn’t mean that I can’t be attracted to guys. It doesn’t mean what I had with Scott wasn’t, you know, real. It wasn’t a soul bond, but most relationships aren’t.”

“Huh,” Lydia says.

“How about you?” Allison asks. “When did you know you were bisexual?”

“I’m not, I’m a lesbian,” Lydia replies, and sticks her tongue out at Allison.

Allison blinks, trying to process this. “But what about Jackson?”

Lydia sighs. “It just—it wasn’t like that, you know? It wasn’t like this.” She waves her hand at the space between her and Allison. “He was attractive—I’m gay, not blind, so stop looking at me like I’m crazy—and he was popular, and, well, it just seemed to make sense at the time.” She shrugs. “I mean, we got along great in the beginning. We were friends, once.”

“Wow,” Allison says.

“Yeah,” Lydia says. “I mean, looking back, it’s hard for me to figure out what I was thinking—how I could have mistaken the fact that Jackson was hot and somewhat fun to hang out with for actual attraction. But I did. Too many high school rom coms, I guess.”

“’He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?’” Allison sings mockingly.

Lydia throws one of the couch pillows at Allison’s chest and smirks. “Exactly,” she says. “Come on, Avril Lavigne. Let’s go to bed.”

~*~

“Ugh, look at this,” Stiles says. “I got Harris for AP Chemistry! What did I do to deserve this?”

“I can’t believe summer is almost over,” Scott groans.

Allison can’t believe it either. It’s a registration day, and she, Lydia, Stiles, and Scott are all milling around the high school cafeteria. They’d already been through the lines to get their schedules and take their senior yearbook photos—complete with the stupid little black cape thing that they draped across the girls’ shoulders to make it look like they were wearing a dress. Just a few feet away, Kira is talking to her dad, a teacher manning the table for the history club. Scott looks over at her periodically, smiling in that adorable, puppy-dog way. They had apparently made their relationship official at the beginning of August.

For her part, Allison is trying not to make the same face at Lydia. The redhead is dressed to the nines in her typical school day getup, which of course includes the kind of heels that Allison’s dad wouldn’t let her wear out of the house. Had she ever noticed how great Lydia’s legs look in them?

“Earth to Allison,” Stiles says, and laughs when she starts. “Daydream much?”

“Just thinking about how much I’m going to dread waking up at six thirty again,” Allison lies. Getting up early wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t mean the end of the late nights spent at Lydia’s house. Lydia arches an eyebrow at her, as if she knows what she’s thinking.

“At least we still have one more week left,” Stiles says mournfully. “And I plan on filling it with as much pizza, video games, and alcohol as humanly possible.”

Kira walks back over to rejoin the group. “Don’t forget about Derek during your binge-fest,” she teases.

“Oh, I’m not,” Stiles assures her. “We’re going to that new pizza place on Main tonight. Hey, do you and Scott want to come? It can be a double date!”

Lydia looks wistfully over at Allison as the four of them start to plan their date in earnest. Allison looks down. She _knows_ Lydia wants to be more open, more upfront about their relationship. Being effectively cut-off from half of her friends following her breakup with Jackson was hard on her. Having to keep Allison’s secret only isolated her further, and Lydia was a social creature. Stiles and Derek already knew, obviously. Coming out to Scott and Kira would be a little difficult, a little embarrassing, especially with her and Scott’s history, but she _knows_ they would support her. But—

Allison’s not ready. She’s just not. She wishes that she could say that it was just about her dad, about making sure he didn’t find out, but it was more than that. It isn’t like Scott or Kira would out her, she knows that. She’s just afraid.

Allison looks intently at Lydia. _I just need a little more time_ , she thinks, wishing desperately for Lydia to meet her eyes, to understand. Lydia does look at her, but Allison doesn’t see comprehension in her eyes—just a shocking moment of raw sadness. Being in the closet is drowning her. Or maybe Allison is the one who is drowning, and pulling Lydia down with her.

Quickly, Allison reaches out and grabs Lydia’s hand, giving her fingers a quick squeeze before dropping them like hot coals. The corners of Lydia’s mouth tip up slightly.

It isn’t enough, Allison thinks, but right now, it’s all she knows how to give.

~*~

“You’re ashamed of me,” Lydia says later that night. It’s a statement, not an accusation; her voice is carefully level. They’re laying on Lydia’s bed. Lydia’s head is resting on Allison’s chest; her arm is draped across Allison’s hip. A small gap between the blinds and the window lets in the light from the streetlamp outside. It falls across Lydia’s face, so Allison can see her frowning.

“How can you say that?” Allison whispers.

“Don’t play stupid, Allison,” she chides.

Lydia’s harsh words make Allison flinch, but of course she’s right. Allison knows why Lydia thinks this—and she doesn’t know how to fix it. “I’m not ashamed of you,” she tries to explain, her voice small. “It’s me. I’m ashamed of me.”

“For wanting me,” Lydia says, her voice harsh.

“No—yes—it’s not that simple, Lydia!” Allison snaps. “Can’t you try to understand that?”

Lydia sits up in bed and glares at her. “I _am_ trying!” she says. “I know that things with your dad are—well, they’re not good. I _know_ that. And I know that means that you’re scared, and that you have to worry about what he hears. I get that! But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t tell Scott, or Kira. That doesn’t mean we can’t hold hands when we’re at a movie theater two towns over.”

“This isn’t just about my dad,” Allison says, her voice low.

“No, it’s about you—and it’s about me,” Lydia says. “And you’re driving me crazy! Do you even want me?”

“Of course I want you!” Allison says. “Lydia, I love you. You’re my soul mate, of course I want you.”

It’s silent. Allison looks over at Lydia. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open. “You—what?”

Dread knots in Allison’s stomach. She grabs Lydia’s hand with both of hers. “Lydia, you had to know,” she whispers urgently. “How could you not know?”

“How _could_ I know?” Lydia says, her voice cracking. “I mean—I know you bonded with a girl. The whole school knows that, or at least they suspect! I thought you were just, I don’t know, experimenting or practicing or something!”

“I would never do that to you,” Allison says, her voice low and pained. “I love you.”

“I just…” Lydia’s voice cracks. “I think I need some space.”

“Lydia, I love you,” Allison repeats, quieter.

It’s quiet for a moment. “Allison, I know,” Lydia finally whispers. “I just—I don’t know if that’s enough. I need to think, okay?”

“Okay.” Allison swallows. “I’ll, uh, go sleep in the guest bedroom.”

Allison waits for Lydia to say something, but she is quiet, her eyes fixed on the wall over Allison’s shoulder as if she doesn’t want to look at her, but can’t bear to turn away. After a minute, Allison slowly backs away from Lydia, out of the bed and into the hallway.

The bed in the guestroom is cold and uninviting, and the sheets smell like laundry detergent instead of the delicate floral shampoo Lydia uses. Allison folds back the blankets and crawls into bed.

“It’ll be okay,” she tells herself. “We’ll talk in the morning, and figure something out. Everything will be fine.”

Feeling anxious and acutely aware of the physical space between her and Lydia, Allison doesn’t think she’ll be able to fall asleep. But somehow, after just a few minutes of trying to plan what she’ll tell Lydia tomorrow, she does.

~*~

Her grand plan to talk things out with Lydia falls through. Allison sticks her head into Lydia’s bedroom when she wakes up at ten the next morning, but the bed is neatly made and the room unoccupied. The house is still and quiet as she walks down the hallway into the kitchen. The dishes Lydia had used for breakfast are washed and stacked neatly on the drying rack by the sink. When Allison looks through the window at Lydia’s driveway, the only car she sees is her dad’s.

Allison groans and slides to the floor, feeling defeated. She had forgotten that Lydia had agreed to cover someone’s shift at the mall this morning.

She allows herself to mope for a few minutes before standing up. Dragging her feet a little, she gathers her things out of Lydia’s room where she had left them the night before, digs the keys to the car out of her purse, and walks out to her car.

August has been brutal so far, and today is no different. The old, cracked leather in her dad’s car sticks to her thighs when she gets in, and the A/C coughs unconvincingly a couple of times but doesn’t start. Sighing, Allison rolls down the windows and turns the radio on before pulling out of Lydia’s driveway.

Since she apparently has a little more time before the inevitable confrontation, Allison thinks about what she should say.

Lydia is being a little unfair about the whole coming out thing, but she also understands where Lydia’s coming from. It’s an impossible situation—Allison’s decision to stay in the closet, choosing to keep both her dad and her friends in the dark, makes it incredibly difficult for Lydia to come out. They’ve been close friends, and people at school already suspect that Allison has bonded with a girl. If Lydia came out, people were bound to put two and two together.

Still, the stress of holding all this in is already beginning to wear on Allison. She considers it. Maybe, if Lydia was willing to wait a couple of weeks, she could figure out how to tell Scott and Kira, and if Lydia ever makes up with Jackson, there were probably some people they could trust in that crowd to not tell. Danny, maybe. And they could go out on dates sometimes, a little further away from Beacon Hills, and maybe practice with the whole PDA thing—holding hands in public, or something. For when Allison was ready to be out.

She wasn’t sure when that would be—college maybe. It was impossible to imagine telling her dad, and nearly as hard to think of herself being physically affectionate with a girl anywhere even close to his vicinity. Even imaging holding hands with Lydia in the high school cafeteria was hard.

And that wasn’t the only problem—there was the whole soul bond thing. Allison would have never dared to bring it up before Lydia’s eighteenth birthday, if she hadn’t thought that Lydia had already known. It’s baffling to Allison how her friend could have mistaken Allison’s feelings for anything less.

She wonders if Lydia will still want to date her, knowing about the bond. Allison is less worried about it not being reciprocated, now that Lydia and her are together. They work so well in so many ways—how could it not be?

Allison pulls into her driveway, feeling a little better about the whole situation. Worst-case scenario, Lydia will want to wait until her eighteenth birthday to see how things turn out. If that’s what she wants, it will be hard, but Allison can live with that.

“She just needs a little time,” she murmurs to herself as she opens the front door to her house. That is something Allison can understand.

Unfortunately for Allison, she realizes as she steps into the kitchen, her time has ran out.

Her stomach drops when she sees her dad sitting at the kitchen table, the little vase of violets Lydia had sent here are perched cheerfully next to him. At first, she doesn’t realize what is happening—she only knows that her father’s face is hard, his shoulders tense. Then she sees a little piece of crumpled white cardstock on the table in front of him. Even from the door she can recognize Lydia’s handwriting: _Happy one month anniversary_!

Her father’s eyes are steady, his voice cold. “Allison. I ran into Ms. McCall at the store last night.”

“Dad, I can explain,” Allison says quickly.

“Imagine my surprise,” he continues, as if he hadn’t heard her, “when she told me that Scott were _not_ back together. In fact, Scott seems to be dating some other girl entirely. I had no idea what was going on, of course. I was afraid you had gotten yourself into trouble. Maybe you were hanging out with the wrong crowd. If you weren’t dating Scott, then maybe you haven’t been over at— _Lydia’s_ house—maybe you were lying about that, too. But I guess you weren’t, were you?”

Her eyes begin to water before he had even finished his little speech. “Dad,” Allison says, her voice thick with tears.

“Tell me it isn’t true, Ally,” he says. “Tell me you aren’t—you aren’t _dating_ that girl.”

Allison sobs. “Dad, please—I can’t—I love her, she’s my soul—”

His hand snaps out, knock the violets off the table. The pretty little white vase shatters as it hits the floor. “ _Don’t_ say it!” he shouts. “This is a mockery of everything the soul bond stands for!”

She doesn’t have anything to say in response—she simply cries louder. Her tears feel like they are going to choke her, forcing her to take in short, gasping breaths.

Her dad looks at her with disgust, but his voice has been schooled back into indifference when he say, “You have five minutes. I want you to pack a bag, and I want you to leave.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Allison chokes out, her voice high.

He turns his back on Allison to look out the window. “Go to her house. I don’t care.”

Her legs feel weak, and she wants nothing more than to collapse on the floor, to scream and cry until she can’t feel anything anymore. But she can’t. Not now. Allison digs her fingernails hard into her palms, trying to ground herself.

“Four minutes,” her dad says calmly.

That does it. Allison runs upstairs and grabs her book bag. Her laptop is nowhere to be found—she thinks her dad probably took it—but some textbooks, notebooks, and an SAT prep book are on her desk. She sweeps them off of her desk and into her book bag. She rips open her closet drawer and shoves jeans, tee shirts, and a sweatshirt into a duffle. From the bathroom she grabs her toothbrush and a stick of deodorant—she doesn’t have the time or the attention to gather anything else. Fear and adrenaline have given her tunnel vision. Her backpack thrown on one shoulder, clutching her duffle bag desperately in her arms, she forces herself to go slowly down the stairs, shove past her dad, and walk out the front door.

Once she’s sure she’s out of her dad’s sight, she breaks into a run. She doesn’t pay attention to where she’s going, only that she heeds the desperate voice in her head to get away. She can’t run far, though, not while crying and carrying maybe a week’s worth of clothes. She thinks she’s still in her subdivision when she collapses onto the grass at the edge of someone’s yard. Somehow she manages to get her phone out of her pocket, forces her shaking fingers to dial.

“Stiles,” she gasps. “I need you.”

~*~

It takes a little while for Stiles to find her, but finally the jeep pulls up, his tire scraping against the curb. Stiles climbs out and just stares at her for a minute. Allison is still sitting on the ground, her knees tucked underneath her chin. She isn’t crying anymore, but her breath still comes in short, shaky gasps. She waits for Stiles to ask what had happened, but he doesn’t. Maybe it’s obvious.

After a minute, he kneels down. Moving slowly, making sure she has time to stop him if she wants, he places one arm across her back and one behind her knees and scoops her off the ground.

He’s had another growth spurt, Allison thinks inanely as Stiles cradles her carefully in his arms. Deftly, he manages to open the passenger door of his jeep and set her down in it. From somewhere in the back seat, he produces a blanket, tucks it around her shoulders. It is only then Allison notices that she’s shivering, her teeth clacking together. Stiles grabs her backpack and her duffle bag and puts them in the back of the seat. Though it’s easily 90 degrees out, Stiles cranks the heat up as he drives Allison back to his house.

When the sheriff comes home a few hours later, he finds Allison sitting on the couch in his living room, wrapped in possibly every fleece blanket in the house, a cup of untouched tea in front of her.

Allison can hear parts of the whispered conversation that follows between the Sheriff and Stiles in the kitchen.

“—happened, Stiles?”  
  


“I don’t know, her dad kicked her out I think, he’s one of those super homophobic dudes…”

“—California! It’s 2016!”

“That’s what I said!”

Eventually, Allison tunes them out. That night, she sleeps in Stiles’s bed—“I changed the sheets, I promise,”—and Stiles sleeps on the couch downstairs. His room is unfamiliar and smells a little stale, but his ceiling is dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars, and after a while of staring at them, Allison is able to fall asleep.

Lydia calls five times the next day.

Beacon Hills is in reality a medium-sized suburb that still thinks it’s a small town—Allison knows word of what happened will spread quickly, no matter how quiet Stiles and his father try to keep it. She doubts that she has any secrets now; and though rationally speaking, she knows this is in no way Lydia’s fault, she still feels a little bitter that maybe somehow, the redhead had gotten what she wanted. Allison feels like she’s been dragged kicking and screaming out of her closet and into the sun, only to have her skin burned raw.

“Can you tell Lydia I don’t want to talk to her right now?” Allison asks Stiles sometime in the middle of the Harry Potter movie marathon he has decided to subject her to.

“Sure,” Stiles says, but his voice is uncertain.

In the end, it becomes a non-issue—Allison’s dad shuts her phone off.

She thinks Lydia comes by at some point, but Stiles tells her she doesn’t want to see her. Stiles and his dad both offer to listen, if she wants to talk about her dad, but she doesn’t. The second day that she’s there, though, the shock starts to lessen and she can talk again about other things, innocuous things. They eat dinner together like a family, and it’s nice, if a little awkward. On day three, Stiles attempts to make her French toast and nearly burns the house down. Allison laughs.

That night they go out for dinner at the pizza parlor-cum-arcade with Derek and some of his friends. Allison is a little worried that Cora will be there—talk about awkward—but she isn’t. Instead, Derek brings three students who go to college with him at the UC Davis, and who have been interning with his family at the wildlife rehabilitation center slash farm that they run. Isaac and Boyd are both in the university’s Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Erica is an animal biology major and wants to be a vet.

Somehow, at the arcade, they end up coupling off. It takes approximately ten minutes for Erica to challenge Boyd to a DDR faceoff—Allison is sensing some serious sexual tension there. Stiles is happily discussing the new season of some television show he watches with Derek, his hands moving animatedly. That leaves Allison to talk to Isaac.

Isaac is two years older than her and cute, even if he does look like he belongs in a Twilight movie. He seems friendly, describing his classes at UC Davis and regaling her with stories about his freshman year with Erica and Boyd. He seems genuinely interested when he asks her where she wants to apply for college, and what classes she’s taking her senior year. Allison answers as best she can without mentioning that she’s not sure if she _can_ go to college now that her dad has basically disowned her. Before it can get too awkward, though, Erica drags Issac away the DDR machine. 

At the end of the night, Isaac pulls Allison aside. “Can I maybe get your phone number?” he asks, flushing a little.

Allison looks down. “I’m, uh, seeing someone, actually. Sort of.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” he says ruefully.

The fifth day at Stiles’s house is a Saturday. Allison and Stiles help the Sheriff drag his file cabinets and desk out of his study and into the dining room. The Sheriff goes out for a couple of hours and comes home with an Ikea bedframe and dresser, a twin-sized mattress strapped to the roof of his car.

“I know it’s not much,” he tells her, after they’ve finished putting everything together. “But I want you to know that you’ll always have a home here.”

Allison hugs him tightly, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers.

~*~

On Sunday, Allison goes to find Lydia. Before she leaves her house, though, she carefully removes all of Lydia’s bracelets and unwraps the bandage from her arm. The skin underneath it is pale and little wrinkly—it will be months before the tan lines fade, Allison thinks—but Lydia’s signature on her wrist is as beautiful as ever. She tosses the bandage in the trash. She has no reason to hide anymore.

Ms. Martin answers when Allison knocks on her door. Her face is a little pinched when she looks at Allison’s uncovered soul mark, but not surprised. Allison guesses that she’s already heard that Allison was kicked out of her house, not just for liking girls, but for dating Lydia. Still, somewhat hesitantly, Ms. Martin reaches out a hand and smooths down Allison’s hair. It’s a strangely maternal gesture.

“She’s in her room,” Ms. Martin says, and steps by to let Allison in.

Lydia is laying on her bed. She’s wearing sweatpants and her hair is unwashed, but Allison thinks she’s as beautiful as ever. Though the bedroom door is open, Allison knocks on the doorframe. “Can I come in?” she asks.

Lydia looks up at her. “Yeah,” she says quietly.

Allison goes to sit beside her on the bed, leaving a little space in between them. “I’m sorry for disappearing on you,” she says awkwardly. “I just—I needed a little time. To process everything, I guess.”

“I know,” Lydia says. “I wish you had came sooner, though. This wasn’t exactly easy for me, either.”

Allison thinks of Ms. Martin’s pinched face. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry for pressuring you to come out, before,” Lydia says. “I was being unfair to you. I know how big of a deal this was to you. With your dad and everything.”

“Yeah,” Allison says. They’re quiet for a minute. Finally, Allison says, “You said you needed time. Before.”

“Be careful what you wish for, I guess,” Lydia says, smiling humorlessly.

Allison hesitates. “Do you—do you still need—”

“No,” Lydia responds. She reaches out, clasps Allison’s hand in her own. “I love you, Allison. And I know that this is—it’s crazy, it’s hard, and it’s—it’s new, for both of us. But if someone had to bond with me,” she pauses, then says quietly, “I’m glad it was you.”

“Me too,” Allison says, pulling Lydia close and kissing her softly on the mouth.

The distance between them breached, Allison aches to be closer. Lydia seems to feel the same way—she runs her hands up Allison’s back and through her hair, chasing her lips when she pulls away. Allison doesn’t bother to fight it, lets Lydia pull her into another kiss, cradles Lydia’s cheek with one hand and cups the back of her neck with the other. To Allison, it seems like only seconds have passed when Lydia pulls away, looking ruefully at the open door.

“My mom,” she says apologetically. “She’s a little annoyed with herself for not realizing it before, I think. You’re not supposed to spend the night anymore, and I’m still in the appeals process. It won’t help my case if she walks in on us.”

Allison sighs. “Oh well,” she says lightly. “There’s still the backseat of your car.”

Lydia grins at her. “Can I—can I see it? You mark?” she asks.

Allison stretches out her arm for Lydia’s review. Lydia reaches out and clasps Allison’s forearm, using her other hand to lightly trace her name on Allison’s skin. The sensation gives Allison goose bumps.

“Do you think I will—” Lydia asks.

“Yes,” Allison says simply. “I do.”

~*~

**Epilogue: March**

Allison sits on Lydia’s bed, almost a year after everything started. It’s nearing 1:59AM, exactly eighteen years after Lydia’s birth. She’s surprised at how calm she is. Lydia obviously does not share her feelings. She’s pacing around her bedroom, stopping occasionally to glare at Allison. She seems to be taking her girlfriend’s stoicism as a personal affront. Lydia is not good at waiting.

“Why don’t you come lay down?” Allison coaxes. “We can turn on Netflix.”

Lydia throws her hands up in the air. “I swear, I don’t understand how you’re not freaking out!” she says. “This is about our life, Allison.”

“We’ll make it work, no matter what,” Allison says. “We always have.” She stands up and walks over to Lydia, wrapping her arms around her and drawing her into a kiss.

Lydia kisses back, but still looks disgruntled when she pulls away. “What time is it?” she grumbles. “It’s got to be past two—” Suddenly, she gasps.

Allison grabs Lydia’s hand, turning it over palm-up so they can see Lydia’s wrist. As they watch, the blurry shadow there seems to darken and condense until they can finally read—

 _Allison_.

It’s her signature, definitely, with the over-pronounced loop on the A and the little curl at the end of the N. She only has a moment to process this before Lydia flings herself at Allison, knocking her over in her enthusiasm. She gives kisses Allison loudly, before saying triumphantly, “I knew it.”

Allison snorts. “Sure you did,” she says. “Now, get off of me, I have a surprise for you.”

Lydia grins, “Oh, alright,” she says. “But it better not take long—I have a calculus test in the morning.”

“It won’t take long at all,” Allison promises. “You’ll see.”

Allison leads Lydia out of her bedroom and down the hallway, hoping that Stiles—who had agreed to be her assistant for the night—had managed to get everything put together on time. Having lived with him for seven months, she knew his understanding of deadlines could be, well...flexible. He had pulled through this time, though, Allison realizes as soon as she pulls open Lydia’s front door. Behind her, Lydia gasps.

Bouquets of violets and roses ring the front porch. Violet petals are scattered across the yard. And, spelled out in large letters with tea light candles are the words “LYDIA – COME TO PROM WITH ME?”

“It’s beautiful!” Lydia says, turning around and kissing Allison all over again.

“I have something else,” Allison says shyly. From her pocket, she draws out a little jewelry box and flips it open. A ring is nestled inside, rose gold and in the shape of an infinity sign. It is embedded with tiny crystals. “It’s a promise ring,” Allison explains.

“Oh,” Lydia breathes, her eyes watering. Reverently, she takes the rings from the box and slips it onto her finger. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re more beautiful,” Allison says.

“Sap,” Lydia accuses, hastily wiping her eyes. “Come on—now I want to give you something. I was going to wait until your acceptance letter from Stanford—”

“You’re assuming I _get_ accepted to Stanford,” Allison mutters darkly.

“Shut it. This is not a time for negativity.” Lydia takes one last look at the tea lights—the springtime breeze has already snuffed several of them out—before basically dragging Allison back to her bedroom.

“I like this surprise,” Allison says slyly.

Lydia smacks her playfully. “You know the rules—you sleep in the guest room!” She rifles through the top drawer of her desk, and hands Allison an envelope. “Open it, open it!”

Inside the envelope is a very official looking letter. Lydia waits impatiently for a couple of seconds while Allison skims it over before saying, “Oh, skip to the important part!” She points at section towards the end of the letter.

Allison reads the paragraph Lydia has indicated out loud. “In light of your accomplishments, the Foundation has elected to aware you with a $10,000 grant for the first four years of your college education, totaling to $40,000…” Allison looks up. “Lydia, what is this?”

“They give out scholarships to outstanding LGBTQ youth!” Lydia says excitedly. “I nominated you for the award back in January, and told them about all the stuff you’ve been doing this year to raise awareness about the stigma against bisexuality, and how you want to go to college so you can become a social worker and help out LGBT youth who get soul bonds…and we get to go to an awards ceremony in D.C. in May! Look!”

“I am looking,” Allison says, feeling a little dazed.

“Between this, and the financial aid, maybe you can afford Stanford,” Lydia says quietly. “We could go to college together.”

“Oh, Lydia,” Allison says, burying her face in her girlfriend’s shoulder. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say. I just love you so much.”

“I know,” Lydia says, running her fingers through Allison’s hair. “I love you too.”

And that, Allison realizes, is all that really matters.

She’s got a letter from her dad tucked into her backpack, asking if they can talk. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking, if he’s changed over the last seven months. She doesn’t know if they’ll be able to reconcile. She doesn’t know if she’ll actually be able to get into Stanford, or if this is really enough for her to afford it. The only thing she does know is that she has Lydia—and really, that’s all she’s ever needed.


End file.
